


Notes on the Avatar Zuko Series

by the_cloud_whisperer



Series: Avatar Zuko [6]
Category: Avatar (TV), Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Author Commentary, Avatar Zuko, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-11 01:26:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 47
Words: 37,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7019827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_cloud_whisperer/pseuds/the_cloud_whisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To include notes on authorial decisions, alterations made to characters/events occurring in the show, Chinese cultural supplements, and miscellaneous other trivia. Not required reading for the series, but may clear up any questions you have/discrepancies between the story and Avatar canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Book 1 Chapter 1: Master Piandao

Character Ages:

Zuko and Azula are twins, with Zuko being older. 

Lu Ten, Iroh's son, plays a much larger role in Zuko's life. He is 9-10 years older than Zuko. 

Zuko is still banished from the Fire Nation, but at the age of 16 instead of 13.

Characters are slightly older than they were in canon. Ages at the time of Zuko's banishment:

  * Aang: 17
  * Zuko and Azula: 16
  * Sokka: 16
  * Katara: 15
  * Toph: 14



Headcanon about Zuko's education

I used to think that Zuko didn’t go to Fire Nation school, because we never see him playing with other boys his age in his flashbacks. It made me sad that he doesn’t seem to have any agemates like Azula has Mai and Ty Lee. Although in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord", Azula says Zuko never paid attention in school, so I suppose he did go at some point.

So I decided that instead, Zuko goes on an extended field trip with his cousin Lu Ten. They travel the Fire Nation much like Team Avatar did, learning and doing whatever they please, and of course, this must also include training with Master Piandao. Mostly, I wanted to recreate that big-brother-little-brother dynamic we saw with Zuko and little Lee in "Zuko Alone" - so cute!

Lu Ten is sixteen here, presumably old enough to travel alone with Zuko, but young enough to not have any official royal duties yet. As Iroh's son, he's really easy-going and fun-loving, but also relatively full of wisdom for his age.

Chinese cultural notes

(because ten years of weekend Chinese school and a lifetime of listening to my dad's history lessons at dinnertime shouldn’t go to waste)

Here are the characters I used to sound out Lee and Mushi's names -

'Mushi': 慕西 = 慕(to desire or admire)+西(the West, here symbolizing the Fire Nation)。The  four dots/strokes crammed at the bottom are another way to write 心(heart)。

'Lee': 立 (to stand, upright)

Alternative ways to write 'Lee': 麗(beautiful)，利(sharp)，理(reason, logic)，力 (strength)，and countless others.

Bonuses -

'Piandao': 片刀(a curved Chinese sword, although Piandao does not use this weapon)

'Lu Ten': 路騰 (路= road，騰= to soar; to soar above the road? Something fanciful like that)

'Zuko': officially, 蘇科(resurrected rule)。Alternatively, 祖寇(ancestors robber :/ from Zuko's wanted poster in "The Desert")，and 豎高(from Ursa's letter to Ikem in _The Search,_ literally 'vertical, tall'; like, why would you name your son "Tall"? He did grow up to be pretty tall, but that's not really his defining characteristic. Oh well, maybe it was intended to be more phonetic than meaning-laden).

All is one, one is all

Gratuitously lifted from _Fullmetal Alchemist,_ which probably took it from Buddhist teachings - I wonder if there's any equivalent in Western philosophical thought? It felt appropriate, is all I can say. Since I know nothing about swords, I decided to focus more on Piandao schooling them in philosophy, but then realized I know nothing about philosophy either. Guess who won't be inducted into the White Lotus ever! :P


	2. Book 1 Chapter 2: Fire Nomads

Changes to the Avatar Cycle

Normally, it goes: Water, Earth, Fire, Air. I've switched it to Water, Air, Fire, Earth for reasons that will become clearer as the series progresses. This means that the dates of each Avatar and Fire Lord will be slightly moved around as well. History is being rewritten as we speak! See below for details.

BG = before (Air Nomads') genocide

AG= after (Air Nomads') genocide

Dates shown are dates of birth and death.

Canon:

Avatar: Yangchen (air) -> Kuruk (water) -> Kyoshi (earth) -> Roku (fire) 82 BG-12 BG -> Aang (air) 12 BG-

Fire Lord: Sozin 82 BG-20 AG -> Azulon 0 AG-95 AG* -> Ozai 53 AG-? -> Zuko 83 AG-?

*Azulon's birth year is kind of weird, because that would've meant Sozin had him when he was 82? But okay, I'll just go with whatever Avatar Wikia says…

Story:

Avatar: Yangchen (air) -> Roku (fire) 127 BG-72 BG -> Kyoshi (earth) 72 BG-55 BG -> Kuruk (water) 55 BG-32 BG -> Tenzin (air) 32 BG-0 AG -> Zuko (fire) 0 AG-?

Fire Lord: Sozin 127 BG-42 BG -> Azulon 72 BG-11 AG -> Ozai 31 BG-?

It essentially goes down this way. Roku and Sozin are still contemporaries. The history between them as depicted in "The Avatar and the Fire Lord" is the same; they're best friends until Sozin decides to start taking over the world. Roku dies in the volcano when Sozin abandons him there. Sozin begins his military expansion and also undertakes a quest to find the Avatar in the other nations and wipe them out until the Avatar returns to the Fire Nation.

Kyoshi is born the Avatar in the Earth Kingdom. She learns earthbending, waterbending, and airbending, but never learns firebending. She is killed at Kyoshi Island by Sozin's forces. The Kyoshi warriors are never founded.

Kuruk is born the Avatar in the Northern Water Tribe. He learns waterbending and airbending, and somewhere along the way, he meets a beautiful (Kuruk seemed to be quite the playboy) woman from the Fire Nation who agrees to teach him firebending (remember they are at war, so this counts as high treason). But she betrays him, leading to his downfall.

Tenzin is born the Avatar of the Air Nomads. He learns airbending and then firebending from Jeong Jeong the Deserter, who of course has renounced the Fire Nation and wishes to distance himself from its transgressions. Tenzin successfully masters earth and water too, making him the first fully-realized Avatar since Roku. However, eventually he and the Air Nomads are defeated by the Fire Nation as well. Only two Air Nomads, Tenzin's wife and infant son Aang, manage to escape.

Sozin's Comet actually does not play a role in wiping out the Air Nomads this time around. Instead, it first passed the earth the year Sozin was born, so Fire Nation textbooks renamed it to mark the anniversary of his birth. It conveniently returns 143 (I know, such an odd number) years later for Ozai to use against the Earth Kingdom.

Music stuff

Lute: could be one of two different traditional Chinese instruments - 柳琴 (liǔqín) or 琵琶(pípá). Both have four strings and frets, somewhat resembling a guitar.

  * The Legend of Oma and Shu: the classier ballad version of "Secret Tunnel" performed by the singing nomads :D
  * Leaves from the Vine: performed by Iroh in "Tales from Ba Sing Se"; yep, foreshadowing :'(
  * Spring on Yi River: traditional solo piece for liuqin



Tsungi horn: a cross between a modern French horn and sousaphone. Iroh also plays this instrument, and apparently Zuko does as well, although he is said to dislike it.

Fruit

Lychees ( _Litchi chinensi_ ) are actually not the same as dragon's-eye fruit, which is the nickname for longan fruit ( _Dimocarpus longan_ ). However, they are in the same family and look very similar when peeled, so if the shoe fits…?

Logistics

Ursa was responsible for sending Lu Ten and Zuko on this trip. As a nonbender from non-upper class origins, I think she would have valued Zuko's learning arts other than firebending. Ozai just didn’t care what Zuko did; even from an early age, he was prejudiced against his son for various reasons.

Anyways, no one expected that they would be out and about for so long, but Lu Ten's a go-with-the-flow kind of teacher. Also possibly not very good with money…? Well, he's from the royal family, so he never had to worry about money until now. I always wonder how Team Avatar got by during their travels. They don’t have any significant income besides one fish that Sokka earned, Aang's earth rumble winnings, Toph's scam winnings, and gifts from kind and grateful villagers along the way. If I ever do a full rewatch, I'll probably keep a log of their budget, because I'm interested in that sort of thing.

Characterizations

Firstly, Lu Ten is fantastically bisexual :) For some reason I can only think of botanical pickup lines. This probably isn't an accurate representation of how people in the olden times flirted. Also, I'm not sure why Shyu turned out to be such a sassmaster. He definitely was not like that in the show.

Zuko will probably end up being more of a pacifist than he is in season 1 of the show, thanks to his early education. I always thought it was strange how he clung to the hope of regaining his honor and his father's love for three years when it was clear that his father never loved him to begin with.

For info about how I've changed up the previous Avatars and chronology, see the previous chapter's notes.


	3. Book 1 Chapter 3: Turning Point

Fire Nation military

In the army, the highest rank is general (Iroh), followed by colonel (Shinu), followed by captain (Lu Ten). There are probably ranks in between these, but basically that's it. I suppose being the son of General Iroh, the Dragon of the West, automatically qualifies you for the Fire Nation equivalent of ROTC.

Fun fact

The scene of Zuko and Azula's birth where Ozai was going to throw Zuko away was the first scene I wrote for this entire fic. But then I thought, forget about chronological order, let's just do a flashback.

Parents picking favorites from day one

"The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all." - Mulan

When I was writing this chapter, I thought the quote was "the flower that blooms the latest is the rarest and most beautiful…" - oops! Oh well. Weirdly, one would tend to associate Mulan more with Zuko than with Azula ("Please bring honor to us all!") I think this was literally the only Disney princess movie I was allowed to watch when I was little, because it was about a Chinese girl and therefore a good lesson on my heritage, hehe.

Azula is said to have been named after Azulon, her grandfather, but I actually don’t know how they came up with the name Zuko. I suppose the only stipulation was that it had to have a 'z' in it :D And I'm completely making up the "we don’t know which twin is the Avatar" thing. I know the Avatar spirit can't be split between two bodies, but ... whatever. Fanfiction™, breaking the rules since beginningless time.


	4. Book 1 Chapter 4: Ashes to Ashes

Chinese culture notes:

Combs make bad gifts 

In the show, Iroh sends Azula a doll from Ba Sing Se, which she burns in distaste. Here, the only reason I changed it to a comb was because of something my mother told me. Apparently there's a Chinese superstition that says a mother should never give her daughter a comb or hairbrush. This is because the word for comb is 梳子(shuzi)，and the 梳 is pronounced the same as the 疏 in 疏散(shusàn), which means to scatter or disperse to far away. So basically when Ursa hands Azula the comb, it indicates that they will become very distant, which they pretty much already are, sadly. Even more telling: in the show, when Azula sees a hallucination of her mother before her coronation, she uses her hairbrush to smash the mirror. Though I suppose that's just because she was brushing her hair at the time and it was closest at hand.

How to defeat your enemies by singing 

Hanxin's battle strategy, as mentioned in Lu Ten's letter, is based on a real military campaign in Chinese history, [the Battle of Gaixia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaixia#The_trap). In 202 BC, a man called Liu Bang was trying to bring all of China under his rule, and he allied with a great military strategist called Han Xin to bring down the Chu army. One tactic Han Xin used was to capture Chu soldiers and make them sing their native songs where their comrades could hear them. Then the Chu soldiers would be homesick and also think that most of their comrades had been captured already and that there was no hope. Eventually, they defeated the nation of Chu, and Liu Bang became emperor of the Han Dynasty. This tactic gave rise to the saying 四面楚歌，or 'songs of Chu from four sides', as well as 十面埋伏，'ambush from ten sides'.

Writing calligraphy 

In the ancient times, calligraphy ink was not pre-made. It came in little sticks of hardened charcoal, and you would have a special ink stone, a slab about the size of a soap dish, with a little well to put water in. Then you would grind the ink stick against the stone and add water to the powder to make liquid ink. I have a set at home, but I've never bothered to use it because apparently it's really slow going and kind of messy. [Here is a really fancy one with a dragon on it](http://www.chinesetimeschool.com/Portals/2/cms/images/201304/635013903969260000.jpeg). The ink sticks would often have pretty things engraved on them too.

Other trivia 

Zuko and Azula probably got another firebending teacher after Kunyo was fired, but I didn’t feel like figuring out yet another character.

Headcanon: Zuko taught Mai to throw knives when they were little. After he was banished, she practiced a lot and perfected her skills to what we see in the show.

Roku's headpiece was passed down to Ursa's mother, who is holding it in _The Search_ flashback just before Ozai proposes to Ursa. I like to think that Ursa took it with her to the palace. No idea how it came to Iroh in the events of "The Avatar and the Fire Lord".


	5. Book 1 Chapter 5: Born Lucky

I'm making up the part where Uncle Iroh finds a portal to the spirit world in the Eastern Sea. In the show, there were just the portals in the North and South poles, but they were closed by Avatar Wan. But in this universe, there could be random other portals or liminal zones that we don't know about. Perhaps the spirit and human worlds are less separate than we think. 

Here, Azula's the more aggressive sibling and wants to get in on the war meeting. In canon, she was eleven, so definitely too young for that. To give some context: Zuko is fifteen at the time of the Agni Kai, and he falls over the side of the ship on the eve of his sixteenth birthday—a nice fresh start.

I thought it would be interesting if Commander Zhao were associated with Azula. They both are quite menacing towards Zuko regarding his search for the Avatar, Zhao in book 1 and Azula in book 3 after they return to the Fire Nation. Both are great firebenders and tacticians, although I think Zhao is less intelligent than Azula. She'll definitely outstrip him before long. 

Also, there's no way Zuko could have been functional enough to travel just a week after the Agni Kai, as shown in "The Western Air Temple". Third-degree burns, yes? For real, how did he manage to keep that eye at all? And The Ponytail just had to go as soon as possible.

Ozai's delusional :) that will come back to bite him in his royal rear. 

The mining colony that Zuko's being sent to is my reimagining of the village where Haru lives, featured in "Imprisoned". There, all the earthbenders would be kidnapped and forced to work in the coal mine under the supervision of Fire Nation soldiers. Ironically, it would be a great place to look if you're the Avatar in need of an earthbending teacher, hint hint! 

Avatar Tenzin - yep, there's me indiscriminately borrowing names from Legend of Korra. Hope it doesn’t get too confusing. I just didn't want to make up random airbender names since there are some to choose from.


	6. Book 2 Chapter 1: Water Around Me

TVTropes

Appa ex machina: I'll try not to use this as often as they do in the show.

The kiss of life: yep, that was just waiting to happen. Sorry if it's cliché! Zuko and Aang, though - I shipped them so hard after watching "The Firebending Masters," but here they're actually agemates, so I can officially tag as Zukaang :) 

Characterizations

The main characters are going to be a little different than they are in canon, I think. At least, they are willfully writing themselves that way, and I am merely their humble guide. Aang will be less serene and Zen and more hotheaded, more antagonistic (probably too strong of a word). He's never known his people, so he might stray from Air Nomad principles more, even though Jinora teaches him everything. For sixteen years, his mother has grieved for her lost husband and all their people, and Aang has had to witness that, so I think he would have a lot of pent-up resentment towards the Fire Nation due to that. But the cheerful dork we know and love will remain in some measure.

Zuko's super self-deprecating and guilt-ridden; as time passes, he'll get around to forgiving himself and stop being such a sad baby. And then they'll be BFFs and everything's great.

On Names

Pikku, Pakku, and Panku, Jinora's sparrowkeets were inspired by _The Rift_ , where Avatar Yangchen has two flying lemurs named Pik and Pak. They're so cute! It is a complete coincidence that Pakku is also the name of Aang and Katara's waterbending teacher.

Tenzin and Jinora... I might consider changing Jinora to Pema if it's too weird that Tenzin and Jinora were husband and wife. I wasn't really thinking about that when I chose the names; the only stipulation was that they were both master airbenders. Hehe.

Other trivia

For geographical context, Aang lives near Chin Village on the southern coast of the Earth Kingdom, kind of near Kyoshi Island, except that doesn’t exist in this universe.

My hand-waving explanation for how Jinora knows that Zuko is the Avatar is that she's a very spiritual person (just like in LoK!) and can just tell. She and Tenzin had a super-duper spirity bond. It's not that implausible - Toph recognized Korra as 'Twinkletoes' even though physically she's a very different person from Aang, suggesting that there is a way for some people to magically sense the Avatar.

Fun fact: the scene where Tenzin appears to Jinora is the only time I have ever cried while writing a story. I have cried while writing papers for class, but that's from stress, not sentiment.


	7. Book 2 Chapter 2 Air Above Me

Facts about the author:

  * I'm terrified of bees. I know they are essential to agriculture and are dying out rapidly and they are good little insects that work hard for a living, unlike wasps, but I am just very afraid of getting stung. It has never happened before, and I hope it never will.
  * EDIT AS OF 10/17/17: last month I got stung for the first time by 5 bees while collecting trash for a community service day. I must have gotten too excited with my trash grabber and accidentally stepped on the bees' nest. They all flew out and attacked, but fortunately didn't chase me very far. I feel bad for the 5 that sacrificed their lives to defend the hive from me. Anyways, it itched for 2 weeks afterwards, and I'm not sure if I'm not allergic or not because apparently you only find out after the second time you get stung. So I hope that doesn't happen. 
  * I love hotpot! Sadly, my parents and I don’t eat out much, so the last time I had it was back in Taiwan in like 2013 :'( And EGG CUSTARDS <3 Canonically, Aang really likes egg custards. I think it was mentioned in "The Great Divide", but I never rewatch that one so who knows. 



Series continuity:

  * Earthball: a real Earth Kingdom sport, seen at the very end of the series in Ba Sing Se. I love the made-up sports like earthball, airball, pro-bending (!), they give the Avatarverse so much depth and reality.
  * The original earthbenders: the badgermoles! It was mentioned at least three times in the series. Toph learned from them when she was 6, but of course her parents don’t know about that. They are just completely oblivious about her talent, ugh. Don’t worry, Toph's big moment is coming.
  * Sifu Airhead: yes, meant to parallel Sifu Hotman :)



Why is Zuko being so facetious, though? And why is Aang reciprocating, for that matter? It's been a while since I was a teenage boy, so they may seem a little out of character, who knows. (Just to clarify, I've never been a teenage boy. I have been a teenage girl who knew a lot of teenage boys as recently as five years ago, but my memory may be a little foggy as to the antics they get up to.) Neither Aang nor Zuko had many friends growing up (in this universe, that is). Maybe Aang would've hung out a bit with Earth Kingdom village kids, but there's still that sense of 'otherness' due to him being an airbender. So both are a little giddy and starry-eyed about having a new friend, poor babies. But I hope to weave in a little more discordant themes as time crawls on (roll end credits!) and push the relationship in slightly different directions.

Why is Aang being so gung-ho about outing Zuko as the Avatar? Honestly, I am not certain why this happened. I could say that's just him being playful and messing with Zuko, but that's quite a lot at stake for just a practical joke. Maybe he was just bored. Chaotic good ftw.


	8. Book 2 Chapter 3: Interlude: Phoenix Dreams

On Iroh

I don’t think he knows for sure that Zuko is the Avatar, through his spiritual connection abilities. But he doesn’t believe Azula is the Avatar, for similar reasons that Ursa had. His reasoning goes something like this:

  * Maybe Zuko is the Avatar and is alive and well.
  * Or maybe he actually is dead, and the Avatar is somewhere else now.
  * Whatever the case, Ozai and Azula must be stopped on the day of Sozin's Comet.



I don’t think we'll be seeing much of his machinations, though. After all, the White Lotus is supposed to operate in secret :D

On Azula  
She is not a one-dimensional villain, although I don't think that came across enough in  _save some face._ Her character was still in progress. But this, I feel, is what makes her the best villain and also the one with most chance for redemption. Azula has fears, apprehensions, regrets, just like any other human being, but I think that she suppresses her feelings because she views them as weakness and doesn’t know how to deal with them in a healthy way. But they come through in the end. Ozai has huge expectations for her, and that's bound to put a ton of pressure on her, especially now that she's apparently the Avatar (even though she isn't). Zuko had help with getting used to the idea from Tenzin, Jinora, and Aang, but Ozai just tells Azula straight up, you're the Avatar, and by the way, you need to get the hang of it in less than a year because Sozin's Comet is coming up.

I think she feels some regret for indirectly causing Zuko's banishment and death, and wishes someone else would be around to at least partly take the spotlight off of her. But she does actually love him on some level, even if she doesn’t realize it.

Incense burners

When I wrote this chapter, I was living at an Airbnb, and my host would burn LOTS of candles and incense. Seriously, there were candles in every room. I actually first got the idea for the incense scene when I was thinking of something made of earth or stone for Azula to try to bend. Why would someone send Azula an incense burner as a gift? Maybe they're implying that she needs to get more in touch with her spiritual side, haha.  

Anyways, the incense-holding part looks something like [this](https://img1.etsystatic.com/053/0/8292446/il_570xN.748543409_2toj.jpg), but with a larger, more stable base. And then it would be attached to a carving of a phoenix, which looks kind of like [this](http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/3dfdf3a2c5024e55978c435a86a7970a/jie-zi-ancient-town-china-phoenix-and-dragon-fountain-on-chaoyang-f3t3k6.jpg), but without the dragon.

Phoenix imagery

This has been overdone in Western culture, it is true. The phoenix, reborn from the ashes, _The Firebird_ suite, and the song from which this fic takes its title :/ The Eastern phoenix is not technically the same. It's called the 鳳凰 (fènghuáng), and is like the king of birds, associated with fire and auspicious happenings and such, but I don’t think it gets reborn from fire. Well, they're similar enough, I guess?

Interestingly, I learned that in Chinese, male-female fraternal twins are known as dragon phoenix twins (龍鳳胎). The dragon embodies male characteristics (yang) and the phoenix female (yin). I never knew that! Granted, this was from a cursory skim of Wikipedia… check your sources, kids. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenghuang#Modern_usage> So there's some more Zuko and Azula foils-for-each-other stuff going down.

@atla-annotated on Tumblr has written a really interesting post concerning phoenix and dragon imagery with regards to Fire Lord Ozai, which I thought you might like to read [here](http://atla-annotated.tumblr.com/post/49315497561/phoenix-queen-king-ozai-ozai-declaring-himself). As a whole their blog is amazing - definitely check it out if you want to learn more about A:tla's real life inspirations!

Fire Sages

What are the Fire Sages doing? Why weren't they at the ceremony? I think most of them are just resigned to obeying Ozai or else their heads will be cut off. But a few might still hold out hope that Zuko as the Avatar will save the world.


	9. Book 2 Chapter 4: Fire Within Me

Earth Rumble VI

I made the Earth Rumble into March Madness bracket-style, because 1) I went to a huge basketball school, and 2) I don’t really understand why the Boulder had to fight everyone and then also fight the Blind Bandit, the reigning champion? Like, wouldn’t he get tired? That seems unfair. But I know nothing about professional sports. Anyways, this is how the Earth Rumble bracket of eight went:

Round 1:

FN Man v **Hammer**

 **Hippo** v Gecko

 **Boulder** v Headhunter

Gopher v **Blind Bandit**

Round 2:

Hippo v **Boulder**

 **Blind Bandit** v Hammer

Final:

Boulder v **Blind Bandit**

The Hammer is based on Gow, the corrupt earthbending soldier that Zuko dueled in "Zuko Alone", although he doesn’t get to use his hammers in the Earth Rumble.

Zuko and Toph parallels

In this fic, Zuko has pretty much already renounced his father, whereas in canon, he still clung to the hope that his father loved him (like, really?) I think it's because in canon, he had a chance (still pretty close to 0) of capturing the Avatar and regaining his honor, so he thought of it as a lesson to teach him respect. Whereas here, he's definitely banished from the Fire Nation just as punishment, no hope of going back, thanks to his horrible father.

I feel that because of this, Zuko is more willing to split Toph from her parents, because he recognizes how unhealthy their treatment of her is. Aang feels less happy about it, because well, his mother is still in the picture, and he felt conflicted about leaving her.

And then it turns out that he and Zuko have essentially kidnapped a Strong Fight Child (I HC Toph as 14 here, not that that's much older than 12, but at least she's a teenager), and oh no, violence and fighting! I would say firebending and earthbending are the most militaristic forms, and go against Aang's airbending philosophy.

Chapter Titles

The chapter titles so far are from [this post](http://lmusent.tumblr.com/post/78481723581), albeit taken a bit out of order. Water Around Me, Air Above Me, Fire Within Me… Earth Below Me! :D Well, I thought it was cool…


	10. Book 2 Chapter 5: Earth Beneath Me

Chronology

Because I end up confusing even myself if I don't lay it out properly.

Zuko and Azula are both told (in different circumstances) that they are the Avatar, the day after Zuko's apparent drowning.

Zuko's earthbending lessons begin about one week after he finds out he is the Avatar. Aang discovers Toph's wanted poster about a week later. About two weeks after that, Zuko discovers the Children of Fire poster.

Azula's earthbending lessons begin about two weeks after she finds out she is the Avatar, because it takes a while to find and bring her teacher back to the palace. 

Sifu Toph

For Zuko's earthbending training, I didn’t want to write a rehash of the "Bitter Work" episode, since I'm sure you all, like myself, have watched and rewatched it to the point of memorization. So I made up some stuff and decided not to focus that much on it. Toph does not mess around with teaching, though. Pushing Zuko off a cliff seems extreme, but you have to remember that she also stood by and let a huge saber-tooth moose-lion charge Sokka and Aang.

Toph's wanted poster description is partly taken from my translation of her poster in "The Runaway". Speaking of that episode, what was Toph up to while Zuko was busking and Aang was shoveling manure? Probably scamming on the other side of town. Again, we already know how that looks, so I didn’t write it.

I seem to be projecting Sokka's love for meat (which I share, incidentally) onto Toph. Originally Zuko was going to find the Tsungi horn at a fish stall, and Aang was going to be stuck chopping fish to pay for it instead.

Sifu Haru

Haru as Azula's earthbending teacher—did anyone see that coming? It is kind of bizarre since they never met in canon. Zuko did meet Haru, and miraculously Haru's village was one that Zuko didn’t burn down, well done.

I mean, there weren't that many options for someone to teach Azula—King Bumi, or an original character, or maybe General Fong or a Dai Li agent if they somehow got captured. But I felt that was a stretch. The most realistic option, I thought, would be someone from a Fire Nation colony like Yu Dao who can earthbend, Mayor Morishita's wife, in The Promise, for example. But I thought, we don’t really know much about this character. Azula needs someone who's less genteel and more able to stand up to her, i.e., someone who isn't scared of her, like Mai and Ty Lee. Someone without Fire Nation affiliation would also help to develop her sensibilities to other cultures, if only through a painstakingly slow process. Someone who can push back on her, because Azula likes to mess with people, but also support her when she's vulnerable, because that is going to happen.

Does this mean Haru/Azula? Hazula? - what a name. It kind of depends on how quickly and thoroughly Azula achieves her redemption, so I'm going to hedge a moderate 'maybe' for now. 

Meikuang is the name I gave to Haru's village. It literally means 'coal mine' (煤礦). Clearly I am not that creative with names.

The Children of Fire

Cao Yu: widely regarded as the most influential Chinese playwright of the 20th century. I've only heard of him, never seen any of his works. I thought about using Ang Lee instead, but I feel like that would be an insult to his genius. The Children of Fire is such tripe—it puts The Boy in the Iceberg by the Ember Island Players to shame. It is such a bad play, in my imagining. It's literally three hours of Fire Nation soldiers marching in formation and burning everything to the ground.

Canonically, Zuko is really bad at lying, but you know, he could have picked up some tips from his four-hundred-foot tall purple platypus bear sister with pink horns and silver wings. This is going to have consequences, though; mark my words.


	11. Book 2 Chapter 6: Inferno

Series connections

This chapter and the next are kind of a mishmash / Frankenstein's creature (hey, it's Halloween month) of the three episodes: "Imprisoned" (the one with Haru), "Winter Solstice Part One" (the one with Hei Bai), and "The Siege of the North" (when Aang fuses with La to become Koizilla). I especially love the soundtrack in the part where Aang wrecks the Fire Nation fleet; it's so epic.

I love it when we have canon characters like Aang or Katara being all into 'hope' and 'spirituality' and such, and then you just get Toph who's all like 'nope, not for me' - she's too real. I love her. It makes things all the more interesting when in LoK, she ended up being super enlightened and could watch all the goings on of the world through the trees in the swamp.

In this story, though, I decided to make Aang less able to access the spirit world, kind of how Tenzin struggled in LoK to do the same and was super depressed and down on himself when he couldn't. He's kind of like Azula in that regard—he expects that he should be able to speak with the spirits because of his background, but he cannot.

The 'Painted Lady' episode, though—that's going to be back. I love the episodes that take place in the Fire Nation way too much to leave them alone.

The Tree Spirit

This is where the Ent in the description comes from. For those who haven't watched the Lord of the Rings, the Ents are the guardians of trees, and they are basically huge walking trees that take a long time to say anything. They're pretty awesome, though, and very helpful if you need to destroy Isengard asap.

Azula and cigarettes

I've had this idea for a really long time now, Azula having a complete meltdown with cigarette smoke and ash everywhere. It is partly based on my personal history with smoking, and at this point I feel morally obligated to remind my readers that smoking is bad and will fuck you up, but you know all that, so moving on.

The village of Yan was named because it sounds like 'smoke' in Chinese (yan, 煙) - as usual, I am a beacon of innovative names. Technically speaking, the etymology for the word 'cigarette' wouldn’t really exist in an East Asian-inspired culture like the Fire Nation. Apparently it originates from the Mayan sik'ar, meaning smoking, according to Google. 'Cigarette' is 香煙 (xiangyan): fragrant smoke, or also 捲煙 (juanyan): rolled smoke. But I thought it would sound tacky to call them 'smoke rolls', so cigarette it is.

Is it realistic that Azula would achieve a high from just one cigarette? Not really, to be honest. I didn’t really feel the effects until my 20th cigarette (smoked across two weeks, not all at once, dear God). The taste is naturally aversive, which is partly why menthol cigarettes are so popular. But the feeling of enhanced senses, increased heart rate and respiration, and all that is due to sympathetic nervous system activation through nicotine, which is an acetylcholine receptor agonist (see, concentrating in pharmacology did come in handy). Basically it makes you feel really energized, even jumpy, but it's very brief, from experience. Anyways, that's it for this bit of author TMI (don't worry; I finally quit after 4 years on-and-off :D best if you don't start in the first place, really)

Salamanders

I read that tiger salamanders do sometimes eat their siblings, in the larval stage, for lack of other nutrition. But not all of them do. Salamanders can indeed regenerate lost limbs, to some degree. I wanted to include fire salamanders in this chapter somehow, because y'know, fire, but salamanders in general are cool.

Other various sundry trivia regarding our favorite Fire princess

_Why is Haru in Azula's room?_

She probably pulled some strings to allow him to move freely through the palace. It's a lot more convenient for them both. Suffice to say that what Zhao doesn’t know about won't hurt him.

_Where are Mai and Ty Lee?_

In Omashu and the circus, respectively. I'm not sure if they'll actually make it back into the plot at this point.


	12. Book 2 Chapter 7: Senlin

I named the spirit Senlin (森林) because it literally means 'forest' in Chinese. It's also the name of the village that Heibai was terrorizing, so I thought it was appropriate.  
   
Toph's surprisingly wise for a sheltered fourteen-year-old girl. I know that in canon, she always seems very blunt and brash, with no patience for wishy-washy philosophizing or emotions, but she's actually pretty comfortable with talking about people's feelings. Examples include that one bit with Katara in "Tales of Ba Sing Se", the heart-to-heart with Sokka in "The Runaway", consoling Zuko at the Ember Island Players… of course, these all end in her punching the person she's having a moment with. I feel like she has a lot in common with Iroh. Waiting and listening and giving good advice is certainly their forte. I think she would be able to sense how uneasy Zuko is with the fact that he's a firebender and that all these people automatically distrust him because of that.  
   
I didn't clarify this very well, but in this version of the Fire Nation, there's no Fire Sage temple in the Capital, but there are other ones like the one on Crescent Island. So that's where Shyu and the other Fire Sages are, doing their spirit-y things. Otherwise Azula could just go to the Fire Sages in the capital city. Also, I have no idea if they had advanced air circulation systems in the Fire Nation at this period in time—probably not. But it would be too tacky to have Azula and Haru listening outside Ozai's window.  
   
I picture Ozai as being pretty rational and cold in his logic. It takes that kind of a person to summon lightning with such ease. He doesn’t rage and destroy everything when things don’t go his way, but rather carefully assesses the tools he has and the measures he needs to take for success. In canon, he listens carefully to his advisors before making decisions about the war (although these generally boil down to "burn everything" anyways). In _The Promise,_ he gave Zuko pretty sound advice about running the country, even though he's still a bad guy. He can be roused to anger, but not without sufficient reason. Most of the times we see him stirred to anger are when provoked, like by Zuko during the eclipse, or during his comet-powered high in the final fight with Aang.  
   
According to flashbacks in _The Search,_ we know that Ursa used a white flower to make the poison for Ozai, but its name isn't specified, so I made one up called whispering starbloom. It's not really based on a real flower, but I think it looks kind of like jasmine.  
   
Us outcasts have to stick together—now whose words were those originally? Foreshadowing for our favorite Freedom Fighter's entrance  <3 FYI, about a month passes between the time they leave Meikuang and when they arrive at the Freedom Fighters' doorstep. Anyways, so: Jet. You know whenever I focus extensively on someone's physical appearance, that means they're going to be a love interest, haha. I'll be upfront about it: Jetko is not endgame, just like Jetara never was. It's just a stop along the way, but indulge me for a bit. I just can't help it with these dark, broody, handsome boys.


	13. Book 2 Chapter 8: Falling Is Just Like Flying

Cross-media references (is there a more academic way to say this? Geez, it's been ages since I took literary theory)

  * "Falling is just like flying, but with a more permanent destination." - Shamelessly lifted from the words of James Moriarty in BBC Sherlock (my other favorite show, at least, before it turned to shit in season 4)
  * Love Amongst the Dragons is the play Zuko refers to seeing when he was young. The Blue Spirit mask he wears when stealing stuff/kidnapping Aang is the mask of the dark water spirit antagonist.



Aang

  * I tried to build up Aang's existential crisis with regards to his Air Nomad roots in previous chapters, making him feel out of balance for reasons like his inability to meditate into the spirit world and the necessary violence Team Avatar has to engage in. I don’t know if I really got into his head enough to make that come across.
  * Is he overreacting here? I don’t think so. If someone you trusted and loved turned out to be the son of a Really Bad Person, you'd be a least a little shocked and in no position to respond rationally. Look at how Katara responded when she figured out Jet was going to drown the village, and they weren't even officially dating. The more you love someone, the more power they have to betray you. I know that makes me sound like some grizzled old cynic, but don’t worry; it's not from personal experience, just from reading a lot of great fanfiction.



Toph

  * Ironically, in "The Firebending Masters", Toph's all, "Don’t look at me, I didn’t touch your stuff," and here's she's brazenly advocating taking people's stuff without their permission. A+ character development mangling.
  * I hope Toph's crush on Zuko didn’t come out of nowhere (ugh, the fact that I think it did probably means it did…) She definitely had a crush on him in canon. I think they would have been cute, tbh :) But I want them to be able to resolve this maturely. One thing I really liked about LoK is that Team Avatar was able to resolve all their romantic entanglements like the adults they are and not destroy their friendships. Even though things seemed really tense (and at times trite) in seasons 1 and 2's love triangulating, they worked it out; it was realistic. I feel that too many shows targeted at kids and teenagers focus so much on the romance that they exclude the importance of platonic friendship. It's all like, oh no, he doesn’t love me! It's the end of the world. Romantic attraction happens, yes, but it's not the be-all-end-all of relationships. You can move past that initial attraction if both parties aren't feeling it and still have a great friendship.



Where did the awkward face-touching come from?

  * From [this Toko fanart](http://tophandzuko.tumblr.com/post/144403346499/%E5%85%88%E5%A4%A9%E7%9A%84%E3%81%A8%E5%BE%8C%E5%A4%A9%E7%9A%84-tkg), I admit. Like, what's going on here? Zuko's more passive than Toph in this scene, only placing a few fingers on her face while seemingly cringing away in discomfort. Toph on the other hand can't get enough of Zuko's face. I guess it kind of looks like she's trying to push him away, but if she didn’t want him there, she would already have thrown him fifty yards away with earthbending. All the same, I was so drawn to it when I first saw it, so I decided to write a scene based on it. And then this happened :D




	14. Book 2 Chapter 9: Never Forget Who You Are

Not much to say, really, considering that this is almost a play-by-play rewrite of the episode, featuring Toph as the voice of reason (which funnily enough was Sokka originally) and Zuko as the ingénue sucked into a whirlwind romance (originally Katara). Also, this counts as Toph's life-changing field trip with Zuko.

I decided the old man in the woods was an actor for various reasons. Firstly, the irony of deceptive appearances. Jet says he is a freedom fighter, but his ways are as oppressive as those of his enemies. Zuko says he's an earthbender, but he's actually the Avatar. The old man says he's an actor, and he is in fact an actor.

Second, Zuko has to get the Blue Spirit mask from somewhere. If it seems like too much of a coincidence, well—you're not wrong. In canon, Zuko just happens to see a mask vendor go by when he and Iroh are panhandling, so he steals the Blue Spirit mask later to mug hapless citizens for money ("The Swamp"). It seems to have been a pretty common mask throughout Earth Kingdom theater, likely due to Fire Nation colonials' influence.

A little bit of back story: in this Avatarverse, the Water Tribes are pretty much decimated. The Southern Water tribe is much the way we see it in the beginning of A:tla: all the waterbenders have been taken away, and the warriors have gone to fight in the Earth Kingdom.

The Northern Water tribe has also lost pretty much all its waterbenders. Kuruk (who in this universe precedes Tenzin as Avatar) was from the Northern Water tribe and was killed in the Fire Navy's attack (more on that in the next book). I suppose the Fire Navy would have to go back periodically and wipe out any surviving benders. So Zuko has a bit of a dilemma if he's going to go to either pole to find a teacher. 


	15. Book 2 Chapter 10: The Blue Spirit

Not much to note here. If you couldn’t tell, "The Blue Spirit" is one of my favorite episodes. The way Zuko and Aang worked so well in tandem to escape, even though they weren't friends or even allies yet, was so beautiful :D

I have a headcanon that the herbalist is a member of the Order of the White Lotus. She seems a bit crazy in an old person way, like King Bumi, but also very wise thanks to her many years and experiences.

Again, no frogs were harmed in the writing of this chapter. Apparently some frogs do freeze in the winter, kind of like they're hibernating, and then thaw out when it gets warm again, to save energy.

I don’t think there is an official transliteration of Pohuai, but I like to think of it as 破壞 (pòhuài), meaning 'destroy' or 'damage'. Quite fitting.

Zhao's speech is taken almost word for word from The Blue Spirit episode. If you're wondering how he knew to be at Pohuai right at the time when Team Avatar would be in the area, well…I'm wondering that too. In this story timeline, he received orders from Ozai to track down Zuko about a month ago. He might have projected that Zuko would be heading towards the North Pole to learn waterbending and sought to intercept him on the way. Best not to think about it too much. 

Zhao's grumpy scribe was inspired by the sassy aide in The Blue Spirit ("Sir, shall I hold off sending that speech to the Fire Lord?") If I worked for Zhao, I would be pretty dissatisfied too.

Why does Zhao keep Zuko's swords with him? I guess it might be as a souvenir since he himself doesn’t know how to wield them. Initially they were just a plot device to allow him to identify the Blue Spirit—who else but Zuko would purposefully steal the swords from his apartment, since they were originally his.


	16. Book 2 Chapter 11: In Earnest Suppliance

An explanation of the timeline

This is more for my benefit, to make sure I haven't contradicted myself somewhere, but if it helps you remember what's going on at any point in time, all the better. What I secretly do is assign actual dates to each event, even though the Avatar world doesn’t use the Gregorian calendar (shame on me), so that I can figure out what's happening relative to what already happened.

So approximately like this:

10/6 Ozai thinks Azula is the Avatar and Zuko is dead. Zuko destroys the mine at Senlin, entering the Avatar state.

10/7 Ozai realizes Azula is not the Avatar and Zuko is the Avatar and also not dead. Ozai sends Zhao to EK to find Zuko.

10/21 Azula and Haru try to escape to find the Avatar. They are caught and imprisoned.

11/5-11/8 Zuko meets Jet; Zuko infiltrates Pohuai; Zhao fails to capture Zuko; Azula is summoned to Ozai and learns that Zuko is the Avatar.

(Can you guys tell I really did not want to write out the details of what Azula and Haru were up to… dear me, why do I do this to myself, introducing so many characters and then having to figure out what they're doing all the time :|)

Aang and Zuko

Iroh said that airbenders have unparalleled senses of humor - well, he never said what type of humor, did he?

Speaking of Iroh, I cannot believe no one in the Avatar Zuko series has been shown drinking any tea at all before this. What am I doing? There is nothing I love more in this world than tea? So anyways, they had to have tea, and I will definitely compensate for the lack of tea in future books.

Also, I read that the reason people enjoy warm beverages like tea when they're sad is because the heat simulates the warmth you would acquire from close, affectionate contact with loved ones (like a hug). That's probably why I like tea so much, because I lack hugs. Not-so-fun fact: between September 26th and December 24th of 2016, I didn’t hug a single person. It was so depressing. It's scientifically proven that hugging (the longer the better) releases endorphins which make you happy! So, hug people.

I did intentionally set up the two scenes in this chapter so that they're parallels. Zuko and Azula both approach the one they're most afraid will not forgive them, kneel in suppliance (for some reason I really like this word even though Microsoft claims that it's not a word), and they both gain hope for the future (Zuko: Aang's not going to leave me. Azula: I must capture the Avatar to regain my honor!) But the similarities end there.

Ozai and Azula

Clearly, Ozai likes to issue a lot of decrees, much like a certain president (ahem, megalomaniac) and his penchant for unconstitutional executive orders. He also reminds me of Umbridge, with that capacity to commit heinous acts of cruelty on the spot without breaking a sweat. Would Ozai really destroy his fancy throne décor just to prove a point? Well, he's a pretty dramatic guy, even in canon, so probably. That whole side of the royal family is pretty extra. 

Also, I just realized that Azula's wall of flame (see, another point of similarity! Dictators always want to build walls) would not be blue, but yellow like Ozai's. Azula's firebending at this point is not at the level it was in the show. It's closer to Zuko's level, I think. Important to note: Zuko wasn’t actually bad at firebending; he bests other firebenders with ease. Azula was just too good in comparison. Here, we're going to see the process of her training to achieve that ferocious intellect and refined bending, because prodigious talent only gets you halfway.


	17. Book 3 Chapter 1: The Seedy Merchants' Pier

The Waterbending Scroll

I really loved this episode, even though it was kind of goofy, partly because it showed us a side of Katara that wasn't really present previously. She can be jealous and petty (obsessing over the scroll and getting mad that Aang mastered the moves faster than she did), and that's completely normal and human. Otherwise, she was just kind of like Aang's perfect, supportive friend and predictable eventual girlfriend.

Also, "What are curios?" — "I don’t know, but we've got 'em!" Those pirates crack me up.

New Characterizations, aka Oh God Save Me Now I Have to Write Group Dynamics for FIVE Characters

I think Katara is actually going to be a lot more bitter than she is in canon, even rivaling Book 1 Zuko  in terms of angst, for a number of reasons. In canon, she had hope that the lost Avatar would someday return against all odds and make things right. In this universe, she doesn’t have that hope at all, because the Avatar is from the Fire Nation and would automatically serve the Fire Lord.

There's another thing that I wondered, upon rewatching "The Southern Raiders": before tracking down Yon Rha, did Katara know _why_ her mother was killed?

I'm going to say she didn’t. Earlier in that episode, Sokka tells Zuko that the Fire Nation raiders left as quickly as they came for no reason apparently, and in Katara's flashbacks to that fateful day, her mother tells her to leave her and Yon Rha alone, so she's not there when the final blow is struck. When Zuko and Katara confront Yon Rha, we finally see the last part of the flashback, where Kya lies to Yon Rha about being the last waterbender. I assume that he tells Katara this under duress, prompting her to reveal that she is actually the last waterbender and then shoot ice daggers at him. Up until that point, she may have had her suspicions about her mother's sacrifice, but she wasn't sure.

In this fic, it's the other way around. Katara does know that her mother lied to protect her, and she carries that guilt with her forever, leading to angst overdose and lots of potential for bonding moments with Zuko, who also feels immensely guilty about the loss of his mother.

Because the fandom's divided between Zutara and Kataang, I'll just say: I ship Katara with happiness, feminism, and dismantling the patriarchy =)

Miscellaneous

_What are Katara and Sokka doing so far from home?_ I think their home situation is kind of like that of Niyok and Nutha (Katara's childhood friends) in _The Rift._ After the end of the war and before the NWT expansion revealed in _North and South_ , the SWT was kind of floundering, with no economic prospects to speak of, which is why Niyok and Nutha left to go work in the Earthen Fire Refinery. They're young and strong enough to leave home, so they do, because there's not really anything there for them. Wow, that's very sobering now that I think about it :'(

 _Who's Yorru?_ Yorru is the alias Zaheer gives when he arrives at Air Temple Island looking for Korra. I love Zaheer so much; he is so cool. He can literally FLY.

 _"You will… reap my fire."_ Because Mako is basically the Zuko of LoK, but not as cute.

 _Why does Aang think Sokka and Katara are engaged?_ Because of the heteronormative society they live in, maybe? I actually didn’t give much thought to it. Maybe he saw Sokka giving Katara the scroll or saving her from getting shot by the pirates, and made an assumption. Living in Chin Village, he might have met some SWT traders before and picked up on some of their customs.


	18. Book 3 Chapter 2: Be the Leaf

The island they landed on is actually Air Temple Island, but it wasn't called that at the time, obviously. It definitely was not the home of Guru Laghima in canon history; I just made that up. 

Downfall of the North

So in this universe's history, Kuruk was in love not with Ummi but with Naoki (and yes, I have a thing for repurposing canon names of minor characters for no other reason than: I Can and I Will). I thought it might be too difficult to finagle Team Avatar into going to the North Pole as they did in the show, so instead I rewrote it so that everything with Yue and the moon spirit still happened, but fifty years earlier. The Admiral Zhao who defeated the NWT is the father of the current Commander Zhao. 

And yes, that means that Sokka doesn't get the 'my first girlfriend turned into the moon' line. Sacrifices had to be made.

Downfall of the South

In my version, Katara sees her mother die and knows it's because of her. That's kind of a huge burden of guilt to grow up with, so I hope it's not OOC to see her so bitter and harsh towards others (well, mostly Zuko). I think it was so traumatizing that she never told Sokka and their father, so she has no one with whom to share this burden. 


	19. Book 3 Chapter 3: The Last Scion

Some spirit power goofs

When I was first writing this draft, I thought that your body in the physical world can't be moved, because then your spirit would be like, "Shoot, where's my body?" and be all lost. Then I rewatched "The Siege of the North", and Aang's spirit went flying back into his body like a shooting star after Zuko kidnapped him. Oh well—I will just assume that in this story, Aang doesn’t know that and thinks that Zuko has to stay put.

Yue's possessing Zuko's body kind of how Roku did with Aang at Crescent Island, to fend off Zhao, Zuko, and the Fire Sages. Katara's spirity power-up was totally made up by me, though. I wanted to give her a taste of what she's capable of. Think of it like this: she has the raw power of a master already; all she needs is the knowledge of actual waterbending moves taught by a master. Yue's presence gives her that knowledge, if only briefly.

Do the tides command this ship?

I just had to snatch this line from Azula; it was such a chilling introduction to her character in the original series. I feel a little bad for just snuffing Zhao out like that, but I was kind of tired of writing him and his incompetence.

As for Azula, I've always wondered how she managed to be so poised and cold at the tender age of 14. My recollection is a little hazy, but adolescence for me was a hormone-laden emotional mess. Iroh says that Azula is like lightning—precise and deadly, but something tells me she wasn't always like that. So I want to devote some time to showing how she developed into such a person.

To be honest, Ozai's logic seems a bit flawed. Bottling up your emotions is just going to make them less controllable in the long run. Iroh's logic to Zuko in "Bitter Work" is healthier, though perhaps more difficult to attain. Basically, you must let go of your feelings of shame in order to deal with your inner turmoil before you can master the technique. That's going to be hard for Azula, though. Also, I didn’t mean to make her conversation with Haru so dark and sad. It kind of just… happened.

Back to the Fire Nation

So, I love the Book 3: Fire episodes too much to stay away for long. So the next few chapters will draw closely from certain episodes. Also, [here is a map](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/161941800597/my-shoddily-labeled-attempt-to-explain-where-team) to show where exactly they are right now. Hama's village is originally way in the west, but I didn’t want them to have to go flying all the way over to the middle of nowhere, so I switched its location to the east, to the island where Aang originally attended Fire Nation school.

Hama

I think "The Puppetmaster" was actually the first A:tla episode I ever watched with friends, before I properly got into the series. It was either that or "The Ember Island Players".

I originally debated whether to use Hama or not, because unbeknownst to our dear protagonists, there are actually 2 waterbenders secretly living in the Fire Nation. One is Hama, and one is Misu, who lives in Forgetful Valley with her brother Rafa, trying to help him get a new face (this is in the comic trilogy _The Search_ , when Zuko finds his mother again). Maybe Yue was trying to direct them to Misu instead of Hama. This is why you should never ask for directions from a spirit, because they'll just confuse you.

But I ended up going with Hama instead, since she's more familiar to most readers, plus there's that delicious irony of her being from the SWT. I didn’t make the connection when I first watched "The Puppetmaster", but Hama was friends with Kanna in their youth, after Kanna arrived from the North Pole. If Hama hadn't been taken away, she would have gone on to be like, Auntie Hama to Sokka and Katara, and might have still been Katara's waterbending teacher. Like, wow. It was fate, a very dark fate, that led them to meet in other circumstances.

too cold to shiver

I am so proud of myself; I've never actually managed to use the title of any book in the series so far. Consider: shivering is the body's mechanism for trying to get warm. If you're so cold that you don’t even have the strength to shiver, then there's no hope: you're going to freeze to death.

Other random stuff from the show

Please take a moment to imagine Aang with a roguish, sailor-style kind of head wrap, charming the sense out of poor Zuko. Okay, thank you <3 :P I was going to make it just a headband, like originally, but then I remembered he hasn’t grown his hair out to cover the tattoos on top of his head.

Regarding going incognito while in the Fire Nation, this brought up a question: does the people of the Fire Nation actually know what Zuko looks like? I think not, considering how in "The Ember Island Players", none of the kids at the beach recognized Zuko and Azula. In an era before TV/internet, pictures of the royal family wouldn’t be widely disseminated (except for the Fire Lord, whose picture is apparently in every classroom in the nation).

edit 7/12/17: ARGH I just remembered that Zuko and Azula were portrayed in "The Boy in the Iceberg" play itself, so people do kind of know what they look like, even if the scar's on the wrong side. Whatever, I'm just going to assume that the average citizen wouldn't notice Zuko walking around unless he drew attention to himself. 

At the end there, I was definitely thinking of how Aang and Katara tried to pull the wool over Pakku's eyes with Aang secretly teaching Katara at night. Katara and Zuko will have more success this time around.

[The frog at the bottom of the well ](http://chinesepowerup.com/jing-di-zhi-wa/)

Or 井底之蛙 (jíng di zhi wa) is a Chinese saying that reflects someone who has an ignorant, narrow worldview, like a frog who lives its whole life in a well and thinks that's all there is to the world. 


	20. Book 3 Chapter 4: Watershed

Potential energy and cognitive dissonance, AKA A:tla is a work of art

This borrows heavily from “Bitter Work”, and the earthbending and lightning bending philosophy presented herein originated from Toph and Iroh. One reason I love Avatar so much is the ingenious writing and the way these two seemingly different styles are presented in parallel.

Toph is earthbending a boulder down a steep slope, and Aang has to stop it. The boulder starts out with gravitational potential energy due to its height, and it takes force to stop. Iroh bends lightning by separating positive and negative charges, and this generates electric potential energy because positive and negative always attract. Keeping them apart takes energy, and letting them come back together releases that energy.

In both cases, Aang and Zuko have trouble with this type of bending because of conflicts with their personalities and beliefs. Aang struggles to be decisive and commit to action; Zuko’s innate pride clashes with his humble circumstances as a refugee in the Earth Kingdom. Azula’s struggle is her conflict between bringing down her brother or turning her back on their father.

The scary thing is, it doesn’t matter which one she chooses, as long as she chooses one and stops dithering between two courses of action. The chapter title comes from this turning point; it is a watershed moment. If Azula’s conviction is firm and resolute, whether good or evil, she will be able to lightning bend. I think the reason her bending was canonically so strong was that she believed that everything she did was right, that the Fire Nation and her father’s orders were supreme. Everything fell after Zuko left, after Mai and Ty Lee betrayed her, and then she started to lose control.

The cup

Azula gives Haru the earthenware teacup more as a symbol of hope and possibly a promise, rather than a plot point and weapon. The whole tea drinking thing came to me on the fly while writing, partly inspired by Uncle Iroh and his calming tea. Then I thought it would be a nice way to resolve Azula’s conflict and show her mentally moving forward. If it wasn’t clear, she smashes the tea set so that in her panic, Ty Lao sweeps away the mess of shards and doesn’t notice that one teacup is missing.

Ty sisters

Since Ty Lee is the daughter of a noble family, I guess her parents wouldn’t be too thrilled at her running away to the circus. Presumably, Ty Lao’s occupation as a prison guard is more honorable.

The Ty sisters are identical septuplets (their poor mother). This is totally irrelevant, but I made up Chinese names for all of them based on _The Lost Adventures_ canon. The first character of each name is 太 (tài), which means ‘very big, extremely’.

Ty Lao 老 (lǎo): ‘old’, because she’s the oldest, haha.

Ty Lin 麟 (lín): 麟 is from 麒麟，the Qilin, a mythical creature that brings good fortune and only appears when a new emperor is soon to take the throne, or so it is said. It has four hooves and one horn.

Ty Lum 懍 (lǐn): ‘awe-inspiring, fearsome’. I don’t really know why the writers went with _Lum_ , which is a Cantonese translation of the Mandarin _Lin._ It’s kind of a weird name for a child.

Ty Lee 麗 (lì): ‘beautiful’. Pretty typical. I headcanon Ty Lee as the middle child, so she’d be even more lost among seven daughters, not even having the distinction of being eldest or youngest.

Ty Woo 五 (wǔ): ‘five’. Their parents got tired of thinking of creative names.

Ty Liu 六 (liù): ‘six’. See above.

Ty Lat 辣 (là): ‘spicy’. It could be their parents having a final laugh, or more likely me going, “What is _Lat_ supposed to be in Chinese?”


	21. Book 3 Chapter 5: Sokka's Master

This chapter is 100% nostalgia, both for the original episode and for the very first chapter of this entire series. I guess it is a new beginning, of sorts, now that we're here again.

White Lotus

Yep, I went there and made the old herbalist lady a White Lotus member. So now the White Lotus know that the Avatar's alive. What they will do with that information is still completely unknown to me. Maybe that’s why Piandao is always writing. He probably has a lot of WL correspondence to deal with.

With regards to Iroh: I tried to allude to this briefly in the previous book, but basically, he's traveling the world trying to rally support for the WL to stop Ozai's quest for world domination. I don’t think I'm going to show his side of the story and all the important things he does behind the scenes because frankly I'm too bogged down with the main plot as it is… so just imagine him doing awesome things like he always does.

Chinese idioms! 

Apologies in advance for my inner Chinese language nerd. The idiomatic phrases that give Sokka so much trouble here are relatively common examples of figurative language in Chinese. You wouldn’t have to be well-versed in obscure texts to understand them, but in my fanon, I'm trying to highlight the difference between Sokka and Toph's levels and their attitudes towards this schooling.

塞翁失馬，焉知非福？

  * Literally: the old man on the frontier lost his horse; how do you know it is not a blessing?
  * The full story is that the old man's horse ran away, and everyone tried to console him, but he said, it may in fact be a blessing. Then the horse came home with a bunch of other really great, wild horses, and everyone congratulated him, but he said, it may in fact be a misfortune. Then his son was riding one of the new horses and fell off, breaking his leg. Everyone tried to console him, but he said, it may in fact be a blessing. Then there was a war, because on the frontier, neighboring nations are always trying to invade, and all the young men got conscripted except the son, because his leg was broken. So, it turned out to be a blessing, because everyone died in the war except his son.
  * The interesting thing is that I wrote this part of the chapter back in July 2017 when I had free time, and then went to med school orientation in early August. There was a talk about how to adjust to medical school and manage stress or something, and lo and behold, this story was used as a teaching point. The actual phrase wasn’t used, because most people wouldn’t know it anyways, but the story about the old man’s horse and all the good and bad fortunes it brought was used to encourage us to think positively even when life seems very tough and overwhelming, which is how it’s going to be for the next… 7+ years as I work on becoming an MD. Anyways, I just thought it was such a coincidence.



杯弓蛇影

  * Literally: cup bow snake shadow
  * The story behind this one was that this man was having a drink, and a bow was hanging on the wall behind him. He saw the shadow of the bow reflected in his cup, but he thought it was a snake in his cup, and he freaked out thinking that he had drunk poison and was going to die. You might say this to someone who's easily spooked by what they perceive to be omens of doom, when in fact everything is fine.
  * I chose this one because of its relative inexplicability, if you weren't familiar with the story. This is part of what makes translation so difficult: if you translate this literally, no one will understand, but if you paraphrase its meaning, e.g. "Freaking out about nothing," you lose the rich cultural heritage and creativity of the figurative language. Of course, this is not limited to Chinese: all languages have many fascinating idioms and phrases that don't lend themselves well to translation.



Metalbending

Much of this was taken from _The Promise,_ where Sokka visits Toph's school and tries to inspire the students to metalbend. I took the idea of Lao Beifong having a refinery business from _The Rift,_ where he's part-owner of the Earthen Fire Refinery. Who knows what he did before that.

I originally wanted to post this at the same time as the previous chapter, where Azula's struggling to refine her bending and come to terms with the fact that her father's expectations do not define her path in life. Similar themes, you know, but this chapter was just too long in the writing and couldn’t be balanced.

Sokka’s name

Sokka’s name is presented in the series as 索卡, which seems to be purely phonetic rather than anything meaningful as far as I know. 索 (suǒ) can mean a bunch of things depending on context; 卡 (kǎ) means ‘card’ or ‘to get stuck.’ The new name that Sokka makes up for himself is 所渴: 所 (suǒ) meaning 'that', and 渴 (kě) meaning 'to desire.' Pronunciation-wise, it does sound a little different, but everyone's still just going to call him Sokka.

Shipping stuff

I really ship Tokka, both here and in canon. I loved their interactions and mutual support in the show and the comics, and I always felt their personalities are so compatible. Here, I put Sokka at 16 and Toph at 14, one to two years older than they are in the show. But, they're not the main pairing, so there won't be any overblown declarations of love and drama, etc. They are still a bit young and need some time before making things official. But perhaps you can think of it as a high-key bromance for now.


	22. Book 3 Chapter 6: broken hearts are never true

Time and place

For the sake of getting my calendar straight, this chapter covers the last week of November and the first two weeks of December, so three weeks total. They're in Hira'a, which Zuko and Lu Ten visited years and years ago (refer to chapter 2 of _save some face_ ), and which is also the home of Zuko's mother. To further the irony, Kiyi in this chapter is indeed Zuko's half-sister, though they don’t know. Originally, I was going to have Zuko walk her home and meet her parents (his mother and stepfather, but with different faces), but then I felt that was going to be too much.

Waterbending

I made up this move called the Whirlpool Gate, though we've seen things similar to it throughout both series. I imagine it kind of looks like a water hula hoop.

Is Zuko aiming to be completely self-taught in waterbending? No, he's just trying to get a head start like a good student while Katara gets the benefit of having an actual teacher. This means I'm probably not going to put as much focus when she starts training with him later on, because this book does need to get finished someday.

The biological mechanism of using waterbending for healing is kind of iffy, coming from a medical background. Yes, you need water to supply energy for your cells, primarily for ATP production through oxidative phosphorylation, but there's a lot more that goes into the process (clotting factors, innate immune response, etc), and those could easily become limiting factors that slow healing even if you have plenty of water. But whatever, let's just say it does work like that.

  
Glassblowing

Haiyan, the grumpy glassblowing master (haha, I accidentally wrote 'glassbending' at first), takes her name from the author of the web novel that Nirvana in Fire, my favorite Chinese drama, is based on. No real reason why, it was just on my mind at the time of writing this. Haiyan definitely ships Zukaang =)

I got the idea of glassblowing for this chapter when I was browsing either Tumblr or Facebook and saw a cool video about it. Then I made that serendipitous connection - glass is melted by fire and shaped by air, fire + air = the perfect combination!! Plus it just looks so cool. Aang really would have to have some amazing airbending intuition to get decently good at it in so short a time. The thing that he's making for Zuko will come up in the next chapter.

This is a pretty cool video that shows some nice glassblowing: [Guest Artist Demonstration: James Mongrain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oahrrN8ZHwE). I haven't actually watched until the end, but it's just to give you some idea.

broken hearts are never true

The title of the chapter comes from the song "Shiver", from which the title of this book is also derived. God, I feel like I'm in high school again writing songfic. But I thought it was appropriate for Hama and her heart of ice, as well as the general theme of keeping your heart warm and full of love (I guess? haha), otherwise it's more liable to be broken. Again, not writing from personal experience :D


	23. Book 3 Chapter 7: Winter Solstice

Excess amounts of Zukaang fluff

  * It should be noted that Zuko is not usually a clingy sleeper (cf [that time he slept with Jet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7325125/chapters/19737619)). It's only when he's with Aang that he becomes an octopus.
  * "You're entitled to your opinion. Emphasis there on entitled" _—_ Okay, there's a story behind this line. When I was tutoring in a high school math classroom last year, one of my fellow tutors would always monopolize the speakers that we used to play music during lunch and break time, claiming that he had superior music taste to all of us (like, how annoying is that). One time, they were playing a song that I requested ("You and I Both" by Jason Mraz), and he was making discontent noises about the song choice. So I privately thought to myself (I'm very non-confrontational and would never say this aloud), _well, you're entitled to your opinion. Emphasis there on_ entitled. It was the best clapback I never uttered. Sometimes I wish I did. But in the context of this fic it's supposed to be a little flirty/teasing, haha.
  * Anyways, hip hip hooray, they finally went from super intimate platonic friends to super intimate adorable boyfriends! It only took 18 chapters. *collapses in exhaustion*



Glassblowing and dragons

  * Bo and Li are the co-inventors of glassblowing, and they got their names from the Chinese for glass: 玻璃 (bo li). From my cursory research, there doesn't seem to be much history of glassblowing in ancient China. Most vessels were metal (bronze or the like) or ceramic, jade, etc. Glassblowing was more of a Western tradition. But it's literally so cool and fitting, I couldn't not include it.
  * The idea for making a glass dragon came from this video: [Dragon-stem Goblet](https://youtu.be/l6_hf7oISZI). The dragon part doesn’t start until 7:32, but the whole video is very well-presented and informative about how glassblowing works. It's just so amazing how they take a ball of glass and make holes in it until it becomes not-a-ball of glass, like OMG. Okay, enough fangirling.



TBT Crescent Island

  * This is drawing shamelessly from "Winter Solstice Part 2: The Avatar State" and "The Avatar and the Fire Lord", although I didn’t bother to include flashbacks to Roku and Sozin's friendship because I think you already know it.
  * Also, remember Shyu from [chapter two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7009621/chapters/16021831) of _save some face_? He and Zuko are total bros. I actually really looked forward to writing him again.
  * At first I was stressed about how they were going to get into the sanctuary, because they don’t have Sokka with them to make the plan. Then I wondered, why can't they just use more than one stream of fire per person? Shouldn’t be difficult for a skilled bender.
  * Finally, I don’t know why Roku wrote himself to be as unhelpful as he was. I think it might be a reflection of my own directionlessness in plotting the fic, because… I actually don’t know how it's going to end. Well, I _know_ how it will all end: happily! And I have some idea of the final battle and all that, but how Team Avatar is going to get there, with realistic expectations and the limited resources they have, is a mystery to me still.



Random writing/continuity blahs

  * Foreshadowing for Azula! I'm excited for the next chapter, actually. Originally I wrote a scene for her in this chapter, but it got too long, so it'll be in the next one.
  * I put Guru Pathik (yes, it is going to be him!) at the Northern Air Temple because the Eastern Air Temple is too far. Literally, that's the only reason. I hope he doesn’t get too cold up there.
  * How do Zuko and Aang get where they're going, if the whole Fire Nation is a string of islands and they left Appa with Toph and Sokka? I thought about this long and hard and eventually gave up. My hypothesis is that some islands are accessible by ferry. That, or they "borrowed" a boat, or something—ah, just don’t think about it too hard, okay?
  * Other than that, I'm surprisingly really pleased with how this chapter turned out. It was murderously long and difficult to plot, but I felt like there was a nice balance of plot and feels and reminiscing and everything.



_ brave enough to die  _ continuities

So as I mentioned, a lot of things that were introduced in _brave enough to die_ but not in the main storyline are referenced here because many of those things were added to the story after I wrote _save some face_ and _time crawls on._ I've been thinking about retroactively going back and editing things in the earlier books to fit this schema, but it gets so confusing… I'll try to link some chapters here that might explain shit, but if that doesn’t help, ask me! Who knows, you might actually help me catch some plot holes, of which there are sure to be many.

  * Azure Dragon （東方青龍）: Lu Ten's nickname given by his regiment because… a lot of reasons, actually. Cf [Chapter 6: Intermezzo](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8213332/chapters/22080632).
  * Kanto: I am aware that Lin Beifong's absent father is named Kanto, which is weird, because I wasn’t thinking of that when I named the village. I was actually thinking about the Kanto region of Japan, which includes Tokyo and several other prefectures. 
    * Why on earth was I thinking about that? For some reason, my mind drifted back to my first anime, _Death Note_ (I know), and how L was able to narrow down the location of Kira by putting a previously unknown criminal on TV broadcast to that specific region of Japan.
    * To be clear, that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of this series. I only mean to explain where I got it from.
  * Fireworks: Cf [Chapter 2: Fight Fire With Fire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8213332/chapters/19437820). Kanto used to have awesome fireworks, and Lu Ten and Zuko were there one year to see them. 
    * On a related note: Aang swipes a firecracker that explodes in the pattern of the character 囍 (a symbol often used at weddings) which is just 喜 (happiness) twice: double happiness!
  * Hanyu: 寒雨 (cold rain). When I came up with that name, I sat looking at it for several minutes wondering why it looked so familiar. Then I realized it's the last name of #1 in the world skater Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan. But obviously it's not in fact the same characters, just the same English spelling. 
    * I have to admit, the appearance of the character Hanyu here is super spoilery for _brave enough to die._ If you've read it, then you know what went down in exact detail, but if not... Oh well! Maybe you can catch yourself up later.
    * I wanted to include Hanyu's testament to Lu Ten's last stand to give Zuko some closure—for years, he didn’t know what really happened, just that his cousin was never coming back. So I wanted him to at least have a little understanding of what went on.
    * Technically Zuko is Lu Ten's 堂弟 ( _tang di,_ younger male cousin on my father's side), not 弟弟 ( _di di,_ little brother), as Hanyu calls him. But oftentimes cousins of varying degrees of relation would refer to each other as siblings, because Chinese family relations are complicated and it's easier to just call everyone by a simpler name. I think I've alternated between brothers and cousins for what Lu Ten and Zuko call each other in this series.



Musical instruments

  * Lutes: I'm using this term loosely to describe a family of Chinese instruments, including liuqin, pipa, yueqin, and ruan all of which are four-stringed and kind of mandolin-like. But they are each different and have unique characteristics.
  * Flutes: di (transverse) and xiao (vertical)
  * Erhu: two-stringed bowed instrument, closest to violin in range and versatility
  * Tsungi horn (Zuko's favorite :D)




	24. Book 3 Chapter 8: The Puppetmaster

Group dynamics

  * Can you tell I love writing squabbling children? Because I do… I like that in the show, the kids get to be kids in between saving the world. It felt real, instead of them constantly being all heroic and intense. Which they were in great measure as well. There's a balance to strike.
  * Shifu (師父) means teacher, although to be consistent with the show, Piandao here is always called 'master'. But literally it means 'teacher-father'. People in ancient times greatly valued the teacher-student relationship, so that if a student studied long with their teacher in whatever craft (pottery; swordsmanship; scholarly pursuits, etc), they would become as a parent-child relationship. In a related vein, multiple students of the same teacher would be like siblings, like Zuko and Sokka =)



The Puppetmaster

  * Old Man Ding: I have no idea what his accent is supposed to be. But for some reason I really love all the random old people in the show, like Old Man Ding, Bumi, the herbalist. They're all so funny and have interesting personalities, whereas the regular middle-aged people are either horrible or bland. IDK why. Ding's dialogue is partly taken from the episode itself.
  * Honestly I didn’t feel like there was much I could change about the standoff with Hama. It was just so compellingly written, with the nice old lady turning out to be a cruel and twisted bloodbender. And Sokka being right about things!! So! Important! Especially after the whole Gaang was saying nice things to make him feel better in the Piandao episode, but then they wouldn’t listen to his suspicions four episodes later with Hama. Argh.
  * I did think it would be interesting to experiment with what would happen if Hama froze Zuko's blood in his veins instead of just controlling it with bloodbending. Result: he pretty much almost died immediately. Thank god for the Avatar State. And this is in fact where the title _too cold to shiver_ comes in.



Fire Nation political climate

  * I don’t think most of the Fire Nation citizens care for the war. Sure, at first it was exciting and patriotic to go serve in the army, in the name of spreading the Fire Nation glory to other nations or some such BS, but as time wore on and it showed no sign of ending, people realized they weren't going to get any benefit out of it. Sure, they founded lots of colonies in the Earth Kingdom, but who would actually get to go to those colonies? Probably not your average farmer from a backwaters village. Only rich city mice like Mai and her parents would probably get to enjoy the new colonies, since they have the resources and motivation to move to a completely unfamiliar place.
  * The rest of the nation would just be drained of all its resources through factories and taxation to support the war, without any results for it. So much for a trickle-down economy, right?



Miscellaneous stuff

  * Onji is the nice girl at the Fire Nation school in "The Headband". She's kind of cute; I like her haircut.
  * Chrysanthemum tea: horrible herbal stuff that Chinese parents make you drink when you're sick even though I'm pretty sure it doesn’t work. Or maybe it only works as negative feedback to condition you to never get sick again because you don’t want to drink the tea again.
  * Since there's no Sparky-Sparky Boom Man in this storyverse, I let Sokka attempt the same naming scheme with Flippy Flappy Chirp Feathers. Fortunately the name didn’t take, and we're stuck with the somewhat less awful Hawky. Piandao gave Hawky to Sokka as a gift, and don’t worry—this Hawky is properly trained to deliver messages all over the world through magical means that I won't bother to figure out.



Azula and Haru

  * For whatever reason, I had such an easier time writing Azula's scenes in this chapter rather than the Gaang's adventures. Possibly because of the novelty? Argh. Anyways, a few (three to four) days pass between each of Azula's scenes, since she needs time to research the poison. The flowers were meant to be based on something in real life but now I've forgotten what they were, haha. I guess you can imagine the poison/sleeping potion to be like the one Juliet took in _Romeo and Juliet_ to fake her death. It only lasts about eight hours, but you look like you're dead.
  * Candle clock: apparently this is how people used to keep time.
  * Blue fire: Finally! Now she's advanced to this stage, surely Ozai will more easily let her get away from the palace and spread her wings.




	25. Book 3 Chapter 9: The Dragonbone Catacombs

Fun fact: in "The Avatar State", when Iroh and Zuko were fugitives from the Fire Nation, on their wanted poster Zuko's name was written as 祖寇，meaning 'ancestors robber', but in this chapter, Azula is the one who's robbing her ancestor :)

Smoke and Shadow

I've heard that some people have issues with the plot and characterization in the A:tla comics, especially this one, but to be honest with you, I'm not about all that. The comics may feel more foreign than the show, but I put that down to a different writer and a different medium; naturally the pacing and dialogue isn't quite the same. I'm personally way more fascinated with the comics' world-building rather than the plot. All the folklore traditions and the legends, and the real-life applications too; the setting up of an industrial revolution that leads to the Republic City we see in LoK, is so worth it to me. So anyways, that's my two cents. 

Multiple elements from Smoke and Shadow feature here, like the Dragonbone Catacombs, the Kemurikage, and the Garden of Tranquil Souls, which is apparently only accessible from some secret place within the palace? I haven't reread that part in a while, so I might have changed up some things for convenience's sake. But in this version, at least, the Catacombs are accessible from a secret door in the palace that Azula found, and from within the tunnels, you can get to the Garden of Tranquil Souls.

Traditions 

Cremation or burial? Some research on practices in ancient China seems to indicate burial was more traditional, but in modern times it's tended towards cremation due to lack of space for burial grounds in urban cities. I went with cremation because Azulon was cremated at the funeral in Zuko's flashback, and so I assume the Catacombs held the ashes of the Fire Lords.

Capital punishment: back in the time of the dynasties, there was this practice called 株連 (zhulián), which is like, guilty by implication or by association. So if Minister Yan or whomever committed treason against the Emperor, not only would he be executed, but everyone else in the Yan family would also be executed, even if they weren't involved in the plot. I think sometimes they spared the women and children or enslaved instead of executing them. Anyways, depending on how bad of a mood Ozai was in that day, Ty Lao could have ended up getting her entire family killed as well if Azula hadn't intervened for her.

Random other things 

I did think about whether it was too early for them to hug, but Zuko and Aang got their hug at the end of the second book, so I thought it's about time.

Miyano is a name I made up for Mai's uncle, the warden. According to Wikia, he used to be the head of the Capital Prison before he transferred to the Boiling Rock, so I thought I may as well use him here.

Why didn’t Lu Ten like Azula? I don’t know for sure, and I definitely did not set this up back in Book 1. Maybe because she reminded him of Ozai even early on. I don’t have a good answer, sadly.


	26. Book 3 Chapter 10: The Painted Lady Part 1

Messing with the timeline

I really liked the two episodes from season 3 that focused on Katara: "The Puppetmaster" and "The Painted Lady", so of course, I had to feature both of them. The Hama arc is over, so I decided to let them have a stopover at the Painted Lady's place before heading on to the next book.

One detail that didn't formulate itself completely until I started writing the chapter was Sokka's role in getting them there. I realized that I wanted Sokka to take charge for a bit after Katara and Zuko were feeling so demoralized by Hama's betrayal, so I ended up having him mastermind the whole excursion to Jang Hui, instead of being a super stick in the mud about it like he was in the show.

Actually, his character in that episode struck me as rather odd. He was constantly belittling the village people and having no interest in anything other than sticking to the invasion plan, and then when Katara's like, I have to go help the people, he's all, "Leave. Do nothing." Like, seriously??? At that point in time, the Gaang had already been through so many experiences together, saving the lives of people in literally every town they stop in. So I was pretty puzzled as to why he was hung up about not stepping in at Jang Hui. Anyways, I like to think that he does have a heart, even if he's not the most emotionally sensitive member of the team; he just doesn’t let it rule him entirely. Here in the story, his motivations are more varied; he wants to get Katara out of her slump, let her cultivate her waterbending away from the toxic memories of Hama, help out the village and the poisoned river, spread the word about the Avatar, and maybe find some pearls, but that's just the cherry on top.

Oogies

I kept this nod to Sokka's reactions to Aang/Katara in the comics since it seems appropriate for his intended level of maturity. But I randomly started to wonder about Katara and what her reactions would be to a couple of her friends getting together. In the show, we're always shown Katara as one half of a potential couple or as the butt of a romantic joke (Aang, Zuko, Jet, Haru, possibly others that I'm forgetting) because… well, I guess because she's the  main female character. And we never see much of how she reacts to other people's relationships, like Sokka and Suki.

Anyways, I thought it might be funny, contrary to what you might expect of Katara's usual staid persona, if she were kind of awkward about it. Though it would be hard for anyone to withstand the full force of Aang/Zuko PDA. You think Aang is exaggerating when he talks about gazing into Zuko's eyes for hours or whatever, but he's being 100% serious. It's a little ironic that I'm writing them this way. In real life, extremely lovey-dovey couples irritate me so much that if I were an oyster, I would have produced thousands of pearls by now. Well, they mostly only annoy me if they're doing things that directly inconvenience me, like stand right in the middle of the path and make out… or walk down the sidewalk holding hands and taking up all the space so that I can't pass them >_<

Spirits, spirits, spirits

I feel like this has definitely been done a lot, both in fanart and fanfic: the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady working in tandem. There is a lovely symmetry to it. There is a lot more I want to do with spirits pertaining to the overarching plot, but I haven't figured it out quite right yet. I think it'll start to play out more into the next books, which are as of now still completely unplotted O_O

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I'm way more tired than I should be for writing a ~4000 word chapter and the accompanying editing. I guess I can speak to why: insecurities about myself and my writing, which as an author is inevitable. 
> 
> I maintain that I write this fic for myself, which I do, but sometimes I find myself staring at the blank page with the sprout of an idea in mind and wondering, would my readers find this interesting or think it's just kind of dumb. Something I've been struggling to admit to myself is that I'm not writing this fic to improve my creative writing skills. I always see those posts going by like, "50 words to use instead of 'said'", and "How to World-Build", and "SHOW DON'T TELL" and all these things critiquing common pitfalls of fanfiction. And sometimes I reblog them, for my own reference and for others. But then I'm like... am I really going to bother struggling through these condescending posts to figure out how I can make my fic better and add more woes to my personal life? 
> 
> I worry that I'm being complacent in not striving to make my work better, but I also worry that I'll lose all faith in myself and interest in writing if I put myself through the wringer with every chapter. Because I know I can do better than this. I just question whether I have the spoons. I had one reader who was like, "your characterizations aren't great", and I'm like... come at me then (ง •̀_•́)ง ... but also like:
> 
>  [ID: a gudetama egg wrapped in a bacon blanket looking sad]
> 
> :'( It's easy to make generalized conclusions about an author's skill set without drawing upon your own to provide a lucid commentary with specifics on how to improve, because that takes energy. I understand. I don't have a lot of that either. I also feel kind of dumb because literally all my readers are super supportive and it's just one person out of a multitude that's getting me down... like I should really just suck it up and keep writing. Which I will, because that's what people do.
> 
> Well anyways, not sure why I put all that there, I guess it was just bugging me. But now it's off my chest, so I feel better :) If you ever want to PM me, come visit me on Tumblr :) @the-cloud-whisperer
> 
> See you around, friends! Thank you again for your readership and dedication.


	27. Book 3 Chapter 11: The Painted Lady Part 2

General Mung

That’s actually his name, although the Gaang wouldn’t know his name, so he’s just “Sideburns”. I doubt he could really lightning bend in canon, but I chose to make lightning less of a royal family-exclusive ability in this universe. I just think it’s more interesting that way, though it would probably still be limited to skilled military top guns like him.

Puns

Half-baked Avatar (literally, ha, ha. :/)

Dock claims the fairest fares, that’s why it’s called ‘fare!’ Remember that guy in “Avatar Day” who was like, “That’s why it’s called justice, ‘cause it’s ‘just us!’” A:tla just has the funniest lines that stick with me forever.

I've kind of wondered one thing, though: how do all the nations speak the same language? Is there one common tongue that everyone uses, and in that case, whose language is it?

Will the real Painted Lady please stand up?

Apparently only the spiritually enlightened can see her, so the villagers and the soldiers didn’t actually see her, nor did Sokka. Aang maybe saw her? Zuko and Katara did.

This also makes me wonder, are the people of Jang Hui really going to be able to stand up on their own? I included part of Katara’s requisite speech about Hope™ here and how the villagers have to help themselves. And they clean up the river, which is great, but if the Fire Nation were to come back to the factory, I don’t think they would have the resources to stop them. But they have Hope™ now, I guess, so the Painted Lady will be able to stay and help them in case the Fire Nation does come back.

And that's fine. Not everyone can be a hero. Not everyone can stand up for themselves. That's why the Avatar exists. Of course, the story is written from an idealistic standpoint: the Avatar comes to town, everyone becomes full of Hope™, the Avatar leaves, everything’s great. It works for a children’s tale. But the real change has to be systemic. The Avatar has to change how the Fire Nation is from the top down, so that the higher ups stop oppressing the little people, and even that is not a smooth transition, as we see from the events of _The Promise_ later on. It’s really fascinating and probably not something I can do justice (hehe), but I just wanted to put my little thought-splat out there on the topic.

Emotional/spiritual energy

This idea was not something I had planned for originally, but when I thought of it, it seemed to give the chapter so much more personality, as well as set up for things I want to do with the plot later on, so I was really excited about it. Bear with me as I try to explain…

So officially, the Painted Lady fled from Jang Hui because of the pollution, and I don’t take issue with that. It fits well with the schema of spirits = nature, and destruction of nature angers the spirits, etc. But consider an alternative. "In the spirit world, your emotions become your reality." Once again, Uncle Iroh comes through with the wisest sayings. Honestly, if you ever want to look smart, just look up some of his quotes. People will be so amazed at your wisdom and won’t believe that it’s from a Nickelodeon show.

Avatar Wan closed the spirit portals ten thousand years ago, but there were still some spirits who didn’t go home. So, there are some parts in the physical world where they still roam, and humans and spirits can coexist. I’m thinking places like the spirit oasis in the North Pole, the Valley of Forgetfulness in _The Search,_ and in this case, the Painted Lady's village.

Spirits are basically manifestations of energy. They have no physical bodies, and their appearance changes based on the energy in their environment. That’s also why the Painted Lady could just absorb lightning without taking a hit. In “Beginnings,” the spirits became infected with Vaatu's dark energy and morphed into dark variants. In Book 3 of LoK, when Korra’s spirit form reverts to her baby self, her emotions go haywire and turn the spirit world all dark. In “Winter Solstice,” Heibai was transformed from his adorable panda form into a skeletal-looking monster thing, because of his emotions. Obviously, he was angry that the forest was cut down, but the fact that it was destroyed didn’t weaken him or frighten him into leaving. He was still able to stick around and terrorize the village.

Why, then, did the Painted Lady flee from the village when the river got polluted? Not because she was forced to by the toxins in the water, but because she was afraid that she would be corrupted, either by the people's despair or the Fire Nation's malice and destroy the village altogether.

Energy has many forms: the more obvious, like potential energy, whether gravitational, electromagnetic, etc., kinetic energy, sound waves, light waves. But emotions are also energy, and so love is a form of energy, as Guru Pathik told us. That's going to come back as a major plot point. Because you know, everything in the world is about love. Anyways, that’s basically the whole reason I took the time to make this distinction in the story.

Sokka and Katara

I realized that I’ve been needing a heart-to-heart talk for these two for so long. They’re just such a great sibling pair, and I’m glad they have each other. This book started with them, so I thought it should end with them coming full circle :)

I also remembered I had to wrap up the Yon Rha thing. So before, it was Zuko who realized it was the Southern Raiders based on what Sokka told him, but here, I'm kind of uncertain whether he would recognize their symbol. I don’t think Ozai bothered much with formal military education with him, considering that previously he didn’t even get to go to the war council. But Piandao works as a source of information for the Fire Nation's inner workings. Ex-Fire Navy colleagues—Jeong Jeong might have served around the same time as Yon Rha, so I went with that.

Regarding Katara’s decision: in canon, Katara had already met Hama, and then after Zuko gave her the option to face Yon Rha, she did and was super vengeful about it, using bloodbending and everything. That’s one way things could have gone, and now here’s another way.

I wondered whether Sokka and Katara’s different reactions reflect their unique personalities or their experiences (or both). Katara’s more emotional, I guess, but she was also there and saw her mother just before Yon Rha killed her. Sokka… more logical, I suppose, and less survivor’s guilt. But I always thought it was a sharp decision on the writers’ part to have that be a wedge driven between the two of them, especially when Katara shouts that maybe it’s because Sokka didn’t love their mother enough—like wow. How bitter do you have to be to say something like that out of anger? And Sokka’s face :’(

And finally, poor Zuko, getting his own canon words to Aang thrown back in his face. What will he do? Well, who knows, but for sure there’ll be a lot of flip-flopping and angsting before the moment of truth in the end.


	28. Book 4 Chapter 1: Children of War

Just to clarify the series chronology:

Book 1:  _save some face (you know you've only got one) -_ Zuko and Azula's childhood

Book 2:  _time crawls on (when you're waiting for the song to start) -_ Zuko, Azula, and earthbending

Book 3: _too cold to shiver -_ Zuko and waterbending, and Azula and lightning bending

Book 4: _brave enough to die -_ Lu Ten, war, the aftermath

Book 5: _blood in the breeze -_ Zuko airbending, Azula and Lu Ten wandering the Earth Kingdom 

Book 6: reserved for the grand finale.

I think I really love writing this sibling dynamic because I never had such a thing in my life. My sister is twelve years older than me, and so we never really played together and such. When I got older and was in high school, she tried to be all grown-up and supportive with me. After I started college, there was some family drama and stuff, so now she doesn’t talk with our parents or me or anyone in our family, actually. I always get kind of choked up when I see all these beautiful sibling relationships in A:tla and LoK. So this is me kind of self-projecting onto Lu Ten and Zuko. I just want them to be happy, gah, but I also can't let them do that because plot and angst and delayed gratification, haha.

I also like the idea of Lu Ten and Ursa being close. Ursa married Ozai when she was 19 or 20 and he was 30, approximately, so she would be around 27 or 28 at the time of the current chapter. Right now, Lu Ten is 17. So he and Ursa are actually closer in age than their respective levels on the royal family tree would suggest. I like to think that just as Iroh became Zuko's father figure, Ursa became Lu Ten's mother figure/mentor after his own mother died. She would have taught him fun things like medicinal preparations and lethal poisons.

Dream sequences! Fun fact: sometimes when something bad is happening to me in a dream, I realize that it is a dream, and then I try to wake myself up by screaming. It's really difficult, because in REM you're paralyzed, and it's such a struggle to move, but the physical act of screaming wakes me up. Well, it's less of a scream and more of a muffled shriek, and it is such a relief to wake up.

Dream foreshadowing! Yes, the red and blue dragons are very familiar, aren't they? What does it all mean for our Fire princes? You'll probably have to wait another year to find out, since I write so slow T_T

Riku isn't supposed to have any significance for the story. He just has a name because I think Lu Ten would be kind and address his servants by name.


	29. Book 4 Chapter 2: Fight Fire With Fire

Dear God, I am not cut out to write an ensemble fic. You may have noticed already: I'm good at writing scenes with two characters having a deep heart-to-heart, really getting their feelings out there and all that. Switch to action and add more characters to the mix, and I am lost. So don’t panic as I throw all these names at you, because most of them are not important. You will not be quizzed on this, but if you would like to know how I made them up, see the section further down the page on the company's names. I just wanted to create a sense of the huge array and spectrum of people gathered into the 18th company, and how different they are from Lu Ten. At this point, I'm not even sure which ones will end up serving more crucial plot points. As the story wears on, it'll probably become more apparent to both me and you.

Organization of the Fire Nation military/military practices

I was thinking about how the Fire Nation army gets most of its soldiers. Recruiting seemed to be a no-brainer; I mean, in one of the _Lost Adventures_ comics, Sokka managed to get recruited to the army under the guise of Wang Fire. So it probably was really common. But it's possible that some or even many of the soldiers were conscripted. Here, though, I chose to think that they volunteered, because we're shown in canon that nationalistic rhetoric and propaganda are promoted from an early age in schools, encouraging an alarmingly militaristic attitude. Clearly, Lu Ten didn’t get that particular lesson :D

The soldiers on this ship are part of the army, not the navy. The ship is only for transportation, unlike the ships of Commander Zhao, who is part of the navy and fights primarily naval battles. It's kind of confusing, because on the one hand, these soldiers are trained as infantrymen, but on the other hand, they also have to know how to sail a ship. This ship doesn’t have any sails, though; it's powered by burning coal. I suppose they could serve both as soldiers and as shipmen.

Radio definitely was not invented at this time in the A:tla universe, but humor me.

Again, the 18th company is a non-bending unit; only Lu Ten can firebend. But this makes for all sorts of wonderful things like _firebenders protecting others from fire_. Zuko does this multiple times in "The Boiling Rock" and "The Southern Raiders", and every time I'm just like  >o< <3

Sun Tzu's _Art of War_ will probably feature modestly as Lu Ten's guiding principles. The reason for this is kind of funny: about five months ago, when I was just starting to plot this book, I was lying in bed browsing titles in the Amazon Kindle store, when I finger-slipped and accidentally bought the _Art of War_ in one click. Apparently there are no returns for Kindle books, so I was stuck with it :D But it's actually a very interesting read! Loads of wisdom, so I'll try to share some bits here and there. It might be a bit garbled, because some parts don’t have much context, so I can't be sure I'm getting the whole picture.

Notes on the company's names:

I had a lot of fun creating these names. You'll have to forgive me for leaving out the accents for the tones on most of these. Microsoft Word is just not cooperating.

"Yin and Yang meditating by the foremast": 陰 and 陽; these are indeed the ubiquitous yin and yang of Eastern philosophy.

"Tu and Ao he encounters below decks": 凸('convex', 'to protrude') and 凹 ('concave', 'to recede'); I literally picked these two names because of the way their characters are shaped :D

"Xinbo, Xinran, and Xinrong are brothers who had been preparing for the civil service exam prior to enlisting"- 馨柏: fragrant cedar; 馨燃: fragrant burning; 馨榮: fragrant glory; Xin, the first character of each of these names, is actually also the first character of my Chinese given name. It means 'fragrant'. These are all sort of fancy names, the kind you'd give to trust fund babies.

"Songzhen and Songtao are another pair of brothers from the upper class and also famous composers": 松針: pine needles; 松濤: the sound of wind howling through the pines like waves; these are also fancy, poetic names.

"Kongming, who briefly acknowledges him": 孔明; this is actually the style name (a ceremonial name bestowed after reaching adulthood, in ancient times) of Zhuge Liang, a famous military strategist of the Three Kingdoms period.

"a handful of unrelated Lins, Chens, Wangs, and Lees": 林，陳，王，李; four of the top five most common Chinese surnames at present. Interesting trivia: there is a classical text called the _Hundred Surnames,_ written in the Song dynasty, that lists about five hundred surnames of Chinese families. Some of them are actually two-character surnames, including Zhuge (諸葛).

There are a bunch that I named ironically:

  * "a man named Ren who's howling in pain from a stubbed toe" - 忍: 'to endure'
  * "a man named Kai who can't seem to sit still" - 凱: 'peaceful, serene'
  * "a man named Xia wrapped in three layers of furs" - 夏: 'summer'



"Jianghui, a self-proclaimed swimming champion of ten villages" - 江灰: 'grey river'; this is what I think would be the name of the village of Jang Hui, featured in the Painted Lady episode

"Zhangwei challenges him to arm-wrestling": 張偉; there have been a lot of famous people in Chinese history named Zhangwei, but this is actually inspired by the name of a great worship singer at a Chinese church I used to go to.

"a thin man who curtly introduced himself as Sang", and "his friend Tsan": 桑: mulberry; 蠶: silkworm; silkworms can only eat mulberry leaves.

"Tuanyuan, a rotund, cheerful man": 團圓, 'reunion, fellowship'

"Rusty Wok, Splintered Brush, Warped Door, Saucer, and Arrow": the way these guys got named is actually something my mother told me about. In her time, people would often either name or nickname their kids things like Little Doggy, Little Pot, things that you would normally never name your kid because they would be teased mercilessly in school. This was because of superstitions about spirits stealing your children if you gave them uppity-sounding names. I don’t think people do that anymore, though. Everyone I know, including myself, has a fancy name derived from the classics or poetry, that sounds beautiful. For some reason, I made this bunch surprisingly well-spoken, a little ironic, I guess.

"Ming Qian and Ming Hua": 冥錢: money burned at a traditional funeral to ensure that the deceased would have money to spend in the afterlife; 冥花: flowers burned at a funeral for same reasons.

"The Dai brothers, Piao, Yao, Shang: the running joke in their family is that they're all going to die young and starving": 殍，殀，殤; I don’t remember which of these means 'to die young' and which mean 'to starve to death', but basically, any word that has the character 歹 (dai) in it is something bad that probably has to do with dying :D

Hanxin: 韓信, famous strategist of the Han dynasty, mentioned in Book 1 chapter 4. I'm going to save his name explication for later plot purposes, though. The inspiration for his appearance and personality is from Avatar Wan <3 who is the most precious cinnamon roll ever >o<


	30. Book 4 Chapter 3: Eyes of the Forgotten

Series continuity

  * Vachir was a Yuyan archer before he joined the Rough Rhinos. Originally, he was ordered by Ozai to find and kill Ikem, Ursa's ex-fiancé. He failed, so Ozai forced him to resign.
  * The friendly innkeeper that Lu Ten and Zuko stayed with was Hama. Why didn’t she kill or imprison them with bloodbending? Probably because it wasn’t the full moon. I just love throwaway coincidences like that. :D
  * The Yuanfen Sea is the name I made up for the giant lake in the northern Earth Kingdom, the one that's historically frequented by the giant water serpent that attacked Team Avatar in "The Serpent's Pass". Yuánfèn (緣分) means 'fate'.



Various gratuitous references to other franchises

  * Are we going to stand around all day, or are we going to fight? - definitely has been used in more than one film, given the blustering all fights between two men seem to require, but most recently in Kingsman: the Secret Service <3
  * Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. - Gandalf, in the Fellowship of the Ring, to Frodo regarding Gollum.



Miscellaneous

  * I imagine the Fire Nation would have to have some kind of outpost in the Earth Kingdom near Ba Sing Se where they get their orders, receive communications from other officers / the Fire Lord, and do other administrative business. Then each contingent heads off to their own mission.



Iroh and hope  
"When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change." Originally, these are Aang's words to Korra, but who do you think he might have heard it from first? It totally sounds like something Iroh would say. From "Avatar Day", when Zuko is lamenting that there is no hope: "You must never give in to despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road and you surrender to your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself."  
  
11/13/16: These are powerful words, even if sometimes they seem like puny platitudes. Right now, it doesn’t seem like there's a lot of hope for the future. America has elected an angry Cheeto as its commander in chief. The nation is drowning in racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic rhetoric. We are killing the earth through pollution and climate change. What's there to live for? Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I would say: the chance that things will get better. Will they? I don’t know. But they might. And that's enough to keep me going, at least for a while.  
  
[My blog](the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com) is a safe space for anyone who wants to talk. I can't promise you that I'll have any answers, but we can be lost together.


	31. Book 4 Chapter 4: On Rebirth

Geography

Where is the 18th company deployed right now? Well, if you look at [this map](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/avatar/images/5/5a/Map_of_the_Avatar_World.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/660?cb=20150814191300), they are in that area to the left of Ba Sing Se, a bit south of the fork in the river, which I took the liberty of naming Maple River. Yes, I actually studied this map extensively when plotting the story and know exactly where they are at all times. It’s a nightmare.

Pacui berry cigarettes and other legit medical…stuff.

Full disclosure: I am not a doctor, just a medical student, so I kind of maybe know what I’m talking about. All the same, don’t try this stuff at home.

For some reason I really love the idea of Ursa teaching Lu Ten about poisons and antidotes. I always thought it was really interesting how Ursa learned all this herbal medicine and was able to use it to kill Azulon _,_ but it was never foreshadowed or set up for in any way during the show’s run. I guess it was just something they made up on the spot when writing _The Search_ to explain how she killed him. It would have been cool if they could somehow have used it earlier.

Lu Ten doing healing stuff in this chapter was also definitely inspired by that part in _Return of the King_ where Aragorn’s like, get me athelas, and everyone’s all, wtf is that? And Aragorn’s like, get me _kingsfoil,_ you plebs! Everyone: ohhhh, that! And then he heals everyone and they’re all, wow, he’s a captain of war _and_ a healer, this totally means he’s the king! I need to rewatch/reread all of Lord of the Rings some day, seriously. I was obsessed with it in sixth grade.

Whispering starbloom and dew-at-midnight are flowers made up by me. White jade plant is real in the context of the A:tla universe—Iroh mistook it for white dragon bush, which is used to make a rare tea, and poisoned himself. Pacui berries are also a thing, being the antidote for white jade plant, but they look very similar to makaole berries, which cause blindness… thank goodness Lu Ten is better at botany than his father.

A little bit on pharmacology, as promised. When administering drugs, it’s generally true that smoking the drug will cause it to hit your bloodstream faster than eating the drug. This is because the drug enters your lungs and goes via the pulmonary vein to your heart, then to the rest of your system, within seconds of inhalation. If you eat or drink the drug, it first goes to your stomach, where it gets digested, then to your intestines, where it takes a long time to diffuse through the capillaries there, and eventually everything goes through the hepatic portal vein to your liver, whose job is to break down toxins but also breaks down a lot of medical drug compounds (this is called the first pass effect). So you lose a lot of drug efficacy, and it takes half an hour to an hour for what’s left of the drug to reach the rest of your body. This is why people smoke crack and marijuana instead of eating the plant containing the natural compounds.

There are still many factors that determine whether a compound can be effectively delivered by smoking, so I’m asking you to suspend belief and just go with the oversimplified version where pacui berries can totally be combusted and the antidote compound can be vaporized to provide immediate relief. Go me. Also, arrow wounds are very rarely clean, but I just wanted to skim over that and move on to the A:tla version of ER.

Also, Piao (殍) means ‘starve to death’; I looked it up. That’s why he couldn’t have died of the poison, haha. See the notes on chapter 2 of this book for more about their weird names.

Poetry time!

Hanxin’s song is my translation of Meng Haoran’s poem “Spring Dawn” (sometimes known as “Spring Morning” and various other titles). I made Lu Ten change the last two lines to a much darker tone reflective of his mindset right now. Fun fact: I literally had this poem saved in my notes files for months as ‘Emo Poetry’. At least we know what Lu Ten’s calling would have been if he weren’t a prince of the Fire Nation. Dear god, he’s almost as angsty as season 1 Zuko.

> Spring Dawn - Meng Haoran | 春曉 - 孟浩然
> 
> _1 Soundly sleeping, I failed to note spring's dawn_ | 春眠不覺曉
> 
> _2 'Til birds everywhere began to sing their song_ | 處處聞啼鳥
> 
> _3 Last night, I heard the sound of wind and rain_ | 夜來風雨聲
> 
> _4 I wonder how many flowers are now gone?_ | 花落知多少？

Lu Ten’s rewrite of the last two lines: 

> _3 Last night, I heard the sound of strife and pain_ | 夜來戰鬥聲
> 
> _4 I wonder how many soldiers now lie slain?_ | 死生知多少？

A quick note on translating. English is a fantastically syllabic language. Notice the poem in Chinese boasts a grand total of 20 words, i.e., 20 syllables. In my translation, I tried to keep it concise and poetic, but it is pretty difficult to cook up something that has a somewhat consistent syllable count and meter while expressing the poem’s original meaning in full. And don’t get me started on the rhyme scheme… in Chinese, it’s very easy to rhyme words, and this poem’s rhyme scheme is AABA. Lu Ten’s rewrite switches it to AABB, at least in English. Yeah, I put too much thought into this.

On Rebirth

“Those who can be reborn as many times as necessary are the strong ones.” – Lilia Baranovskaya, _Yuri!!! on Ice_

Oh my god, this show saved 2016. It was a shit year, but the love and strength and character development and pure beauteous masterpiece of writing contained in this wonderful anime about ice skating helped me finish it strong. You should watch it! This quote really stuck with me as something that kind of summarizes the show as a whole and the development arcs of its three main characters. I feel that it’s applicable to many characters in this story too—Lu Ten, Zuko, Iroh eventually, after his son dies.

I don’t always think I’m someone who can remake myself at will; I very much prefer to stick to habits I’m comfortable and familiar with. But I realized that even without knowing it, I am remaking myself to fit new circumstances, because needs must. In life, to stay still is to stagnate; unless you can reinvent yourself to adapt to new situations and challenges, you will die (metaphorically, most of the time, but also literally).

I wonder if Hanxin’s being too presumptuous and harsh in his assessment of Lu Ten’s mental state and his criticism of how Lu Ten treats himself upon his perceived failures. It kind of reminds me of times when my mother and other well-meaning people just say to me, “Be happy! It’s a choice you have to make!” Like wow, _I never thought of that_ (that’s sarcasm, btw). Indeed, it is a choice we have to make, but boy, is it a difficult one. At the same time, I think Lu Ten needs someone who will call him out on his self-blaming tendencies and make him realize that he has the strength to improve and become the great leader he’s meant to be. I just don’t know if that was effectively delivered. Oh well, don’t worry; it will be resolved eventually!


	32. Book 4 Chapter 5: Rain and Fire Lilies

Characterization(s)

I kind of want to develop Kongming as a foil to Hanxin: arrogant, highly educated, and well-trained in military history and stratagems, but loses his cool in the heat of battle, as opposed to Hanxin's calm demeanor and brilliant if unconventional strategy. I don’t want him to become a caricature, though. He has some of the same motivations as Hanxin: seeks Lu Ten's approval, likes to actively contribute to the group's mission, considers himself a trustworthy advisor, but he doesn’t really boast the same basic respect for other people. He's not based on any character in particular. 

Battle stuff

Refer back to Book 1 [Chapter 4](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7009621/chapters/16237217) and writing [notes ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7019827/chapters/16237436)for a succinct description of this battle and its historic background. Basically, it was inspired by a real battle in the early dynastic history of China, albeit on a much larger scale than the few dozen soldiers present here.

I imagine that the 18th company would use a variety of weapons. In the show, I really can't remember seeing FN soldiers using any weapons besides firebending and spears, but I could be wrong. In this story, they also have _jian_ (double-edged swords, like Sokka's sword) and _dao_ (single-edged swords, like Zuko's swords), because swords are cool, and also I think spears would have less functionality in a dark forest where trees grow close together and visibility is limited.

FN literacy rate

It's difficult to gauge, but from Book 3 episodes like "The Headband", it seems that even small villages have well-attended schools. The Fire Lord would probably be in favor of education reform and keeping kids in school, so that teachers could indoctrinate children in Fire Nation supremacy early on (and also hand out pictures of the Fire Lord). So, Hanxin would have to be from a really backwaters, rural village, to not be able to read and write at all, and that would likely be a sore point for him amongst the more aristocratic members of the group. I also headcanon Hanxin as having been orphaned from an early age, so he picked up a profession that was accessible to someone with no education or family support. Wow, this got depressing fast.

  
Hanxin's song

My translation of a poem by Zhang Ji (apologies for the slant rhyme and general inability to stick to one meter):

楓橋夜泊·張繼 | Mooring by Maple Bridge at Night

> 月落烏啼霜滿天 | _At moonset, the crows salute skies full of frost_
> 
> 江楓漁火對愁眠 | _Though river lights shine bright, in dreams I am lost_
> 
> 姑蘇城外寒山寺 | _Outside Gusu, Cold Mountain Temple calls_
> 
> 夜半鐘聲到客船 | _From my boat, I hear the midnight bells' tolls_

[Maple Bridge](http://www.orientalarchitecture.com/sid/130/china/suzhou/maple-bridge), in Suzhou, Jiangsu, is pictured in [this photo](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/156732389922/maple-bridge-suzhou-1992-%E6%A5%93%E6%A9%8B%E8%98%87%E5%B7%9E%E6%B0%91%E5%9C%8B%E5%85%AB%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%80%E5%B9%B4), which my mother took on a visit to China in 1992 before I was born. Her forebears originate from Jiangsu, so this was emotionally significant to her.

The Earth Kingdom soldiers in this chapter are from the mountainous area northwest of Ba Sing Se, and I suppose the places named in this song would be familiar to them and constitute nostalgic homesickness. I was feeling pretty homesick while writing this too. It really sucks, being away from home; you don’t even realize it until you've been gone for months. So that came out in this chapter.

Lu Ten and Hanxin

It is worthy of note that Lu Ten is still a teenager, and that his behavior with Hanxin can be classified as pining, as such he _is_ a pining teenager, no matter what he likes to think.

Originally Lu Ten was going to ask Hanxin to be his flame, from which the phoenix is reborn, but then I thought, no, enough with that tired old phoenix and reincarnation imagery. Let's go with flowers; that's cuter. Honestly, I made myself blush writing all their loving dialogue. Slow burn is clearly not in my vocabulary. But in spite of all the prettified words they're throwing between each other, they've still got some ways to go before they're official. I am way too in love with what is essentially a pair of OCs.


	33. Book 4 Chapter 6: Intermezzo

Chekov's gun

I didn’t explain what the White Lotus box contained in chapter one, and I couldn’t find a proper place to discuss it in any of the intervening chapters, which was bugging me. But now you know! It's a care package from Master Piandao, containing a banned book, some old autographs, and invisible ink. A+ parenting skills, Piandao. The invisible ink is the type that Iroh used to send Zuko a message in "The Avatar and the Firelord". It can only be read when held in front of candlelight.

Also, I realized that I forgot to give any insight into how the puzzle lock works. Basically, it's the same as a combination lock, the kind with a circular dial that's numbered 0 through 39. Anyone who's gone to gym class in American high schools has had these - you get a combination of three numbers, and you turn the dial clockwise to the first number, then turn it counterclockwise, passing the second number until you get around to it again, then turning it clockwise again to the third number, opening the lock. With the White Lotus lock, it has eight petals, so it's like the lock is numbered 1 through 8. "All is one and one is all" would give you a combination of 8-1-8 (all-one-all). Idk, it sounded cool in my head, but maybe it's kind of lame, haha. I just wanted Hanxin to beat all those snobby scholars with instinctual cleverness. 

The Art of War

Qizheng is definitely meant to be Sun Tzu, the legendary author of _The Art of War_. I didn’t want to introduce too much of the real world into this fic, so I chose instead Qízhèng (奇正). The name comes from the fifth chapter, where Sun Tzu discusses 正, or direct maneuvers (marching to attack the enemy head-on) and 奇, or indirect maneuvers (such as attacking from behind or creating a deception). It seemed like a fitting summary of the variability that encompasses military strategy, but also, it just sounded like a plausible name. It's pronounced chi-jung… sort of? Hmm, it's hard to provide pronunciation guides for Chinese digraphs like 'zh' that don’t have any English equivalent.

I don’t think _The Art of War_ actually got banned in real life. It just sounds like the kind of asshole thing Sozin would do.

Bits and pieces of wisdom that Lu Ten's trying to pass to his baby cousin:

  * All warfare is deception. Chapter one of _The Art of War_.
  * He will prevail who knows when to fight and when not to fight. From chapter three; basically: pick your battles wisely. Which begs the question: has Iroh read Qizheng's writings? I don’t think so, not yet. I HC Iroh as not having joined the White Lotus at this point, but after Lu Ten dies and Iroh goes on his life-changing fieldtrip (by himself D=), he meets members of the White Lotus, and because of his great wisdom and new, calmer outlook on life, is inducted.
  * Make your surroundings fight for you is also definitely something Sun Tzu emphasizes in chapters ten and eleven.



Other Chinese classics

The Book of Changes, the Spring and Autumn Annals, and the Book of Odes are three of the five classics of Confucianism. The Eight Immortals are eight figures of Taoist tradition that were humans who became deities, but other than that I know nothing about them. The Ember Island Tracts and Paoism are made up.

I'm just gonna provide links to the classic stories that Lu Ten falsified: [The Legend of Yi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houyi); [The Legend of Chang'e](http://www.moonfestival.org/the-legend-of-chang-e.html); [The Butterfly Lovers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Lovers) (this one is my favorite; I think it's going to feature later. It's the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet, kind of).

The [Azure Dragon of the East](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Dragon) comes from traditional mythology, but I don’t think anyone believes in that anymore, unless they're really into feng shui and such. I just thought, Lu Ten should have a cool title. I don’t think his blue lightning is actually special, because in the show, Azula, Ozai, and Iroh all seem to generate lightning that's sort of bluish.

[Li Bai's "Night Thoughts"](https://eastasiastudent.net/china/classical/li-bai-night-thoughts/): Ah, here's yet another poem that every reluctant kid in Chinese school has to learn. When I used to tutor high school math students, they would always have these two constant refrains: 1) Am I ever going to use this in real life? [YES YOU ARE!] and 2) Not everything has to stand for something [talking about their English reading assignments]. That, I can agree with, which is why I gave this poem a cameo in Zuko's letter. The moon, in this poem, really does just stand for the moon. The poet misses his home and contemplates it under the bright moonlight; it's very pastoral and scenic, no bells and whistles, quite characteristic of Li Bai's poetry.

What's in a name?

Refer back to the notes on _save some face_ chapter one for explanations of [Mushi and Lee](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7019827/chapters/15978724).

Hanxin (韓信) name explication: 韓 is pretty much exclusively used to denote Korea (韓國) in modern usage. Digging around on the internet seems to also turn up meanings including 'fence' and 'tamp', but I don’t know if it actually means that. In real life, it's the surname of the original Han Xin from the Han Dynasty (these two Han's are different; see what problems you run into with a phonetic language? D=). Here, it's part of his given name, and he has no surname, like most others of the time. 信, as stated, means faith, reliability, trust (it can also mean mail, truth, or news depending on context).

Characterizations

Songzhen and Kongming are basically the mean girls. Like wow, did they have to rub it in about Hanxin being an illiterate plebian? Cut him a break; he's a better man than you. I hope Shang's not too ditzy. He's adorable. Don’t get too attached to him, though.

Hanxin's about two years older than Lu Ten, I imagine, so about twenty at this time. The troop ranges in age from fourteen (Shang) to twenty-eight (Tuanyuan), with most being eighteen to twenty-two or so.

Legend of Korra shout-outs

"No one steals from the Chous!" "You can't steal fire from the lion turtle!" Wan: "Really? Because I just did." <3 I love Avatar Wan so much.

  
Lu Ten's description of the Battle of Argent River where he electrified the river - totes inspired by Mako killing Ming Hua by electrocution in Book Three. Water conducts electricity very finely. That was SUCH a gruesome death, though; shit, the members of the Red Lotus really came to terrible ends. Ming Hua: electrocuted. P'Li: head blown off. Ghazan: suicide by burying himself in rock and lava. Zaheer: life in prison (well, he can meditate to the spirit world, so he can be free in a sense).

Handedness

I started writing the scene where Lu Ten teaches Hanxin to write ages ago. The first draft was partly written on 10/15/16 at the laundromat (I don’t know why I feel the need to share this). After that, I spent way too much time trying to figure out the handedness of various characters. Here are my findings:

  * Sokka: technically ambidextrous but mainly right-handed (draws with left hand in 'Lake Laogai', writes (and draws) with right hand in 'Sokka's Master', 'The Runaway', draws with right hand in the very end at the Jasmine Dragon in Ba Sing Se)
  * Zuko: right-handed ('Day of Black Sun part 2')
  * Iroh: right-handed ('Zuko Alone')
  * Piandao: right-handed ('Sokka's Master')



There might be other examples; I haven't rewatched A:tla in a while. And it's true about parents beating the left-handedness out of their kids when they're first learning to write, at least in Chinese families. It may have been similar in Western culture, though I'd hope that people are less ignorant these days.

Handedness as a metaphor for sexuality, i.e., are you more likely to be homosexual if you're left-handed? There are plenty of studies that attempt to establish a link, but most of them are not statistically significant. It would be cool if that were true, though, because then I would be ambidextrous :D I just used it as a metaphor here, but I don’t mean to imply that there's a correlation between handedness and sexuality. Lu Ten's bisexual, can write with both hands, is more into guys (but in public would have to embrace the opposite). Hanxin's gay, writes with left hand—ooh, I just realized how that would go down with Songzhen/Kongming, who definitely are right-handed like the rest of the masses.

You've Got Mail

If you noticed the time difference between each letter in this chapter, it takes two months for them to exchange letters each way, because of the distance, and most likely a delay on Lu Ten's end because he's so busy with the war. The way I think the mail system would work is that messenger hawks would fly between Lu Ten's unit out in the northwest countryside and the Fire Nation military base in the south. They would not fly directly from Lu Ten's location all the way to Zuko in the Fire Nation because 1) it's too far, and 2) I don’t think they could magically know how to fly to a place they've never been to.

This does raise the question of: how do they know how to find Lu Ten if he's constantly moving around the place? I do not know. In "The Runaway", there was a mention of training messenger hawks ([see post](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/157465839157/translation-for-poster-pictured-above-messenger)), but Sokka never trained Hawky, so who knows if Toph's parents ever got the letter she sent them later on :0

Regarding the Battle of the Beaver Dam: I was thinking of Jet and his dam, but in a more natural setting. I looked up 'beaver dam collapse' to see if it could actually cause sufficient devastation, and wow, did that pay off. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFMRD5kuREw>. According to the video uploader, the beavers rebuilt their dam pretty soon afterwards, so no worries :D


	34. Book 4 Chapter 7: The Butterfly Lovers

History and logistics of conquest

I spent an unnecessary amount of time thinking about things like: how did the 18th company get food and stuff if they were wandering around the boondocks for over a year? I concluded that mostly they lived off the land, but that gets a little iffy, considering that there are 50 people to feed. They can carry some stuff with them on their 6 overburdened rhinos, though not enough for the whole time. In general, it was likely to be very frugal living, especially if they didn’t get food by raiding local villages as a conquering army would usually do. But well, I imagine Lu Ten made it work.

The Warring States Epoch that Shang mentions mirrors the Warring States period of ancient Chinese history, before Qin Shihuangdi unified (loosely, anyways) China in 221 BC. It's what it sounds like, lots of minor lords and self-proclaimed kings fighting for power. Interestingly, it does sort of have an equivalent in Avatar history. In _Smoke and Shadow_ part 2, Zuko, Aang, Mai, and Kei Lo go into the Dragonbone Catacombs in search of information about the Kemurikage, and they find this scroll that talks about Fire Nation history. Basically, before there was such thing as the Fire Lord, the islands used to be divided into many territories squabbled over by cruel warlords who demanded children as tributes from the conquered peoples. The Kemurikage were spirits who haunted the evil warlords because of their misdeeds.

The act of sending beautiful young women (eh, let's be real here, they were pretty much high school girls by today's age standards) to satisfy and appease conquering forces was something I didn’t specifically research for this fic, so I couldn’t tell you how common a practice it actually was. If you do a cursory search of war crimes throughout history, you can get a sense of how it varies between cultures and time periods. I really did not feel up to it, and I can understand if that part was a bit distasteful to read. It was a thing that happened, and I wanted to put Lu Ten in a situation where he acutely feels that he's been put into the shoes of a monster, and how he would react to that :'( Not very well at all, but fortunately he has Hanxin <3

East and West (since _North and South_ is now a thing in the comics :D)

Haha, that's me trying to be punny. Ignore me (or don’t; read on as you like)

So, the idea that dragons are evil is European-centric; think Tolkien and Smaug in _The Hobbit_. Lately that's changed, and you get nice dragons like in HTTYD and the Inheritance cycle. Eastern dragons aren't evil, usually. They are an auspicious omen associated with rain, not fire, although they do breathe fire. Also, Eastern dragons traditionally don't have wings, at least not as big as Western dragons'. They do fly, but that's because they're magic, not aerodynamic.

The story of Liang Shanbo (梁山伯）and Zhu Yingtai （祝英台）, often abbreviated as Liangzhu, is pretty much exactly as told by Shang. Apparently a comparison is often made of it being the Chinese Romeo and Juliet because of the tragic, impossible love aspect, although may I venture to say that I like Liangzhu better, because they actually get to know each other and become friends instead of getting married after two days. Also, Romeo is over twice Juliet's age :/

This has no relevance whatsoever to the plot, but there is a beautiful piece that you should listen to, the Butterfly Lovers Concerto, inspired by this story. It's originally written for erhu (a Chinese two-stringed upright violin-like instrument), and it is SO beautiful. Gahhh. Here are two versions:

  * Erhu and traditional orchestra: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu5XohUR3Pg>
  * Violin and Western orchestra: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQMKiwk7J0s>



Song Yu （宋玉) was a poet of the late Warring States period, but I chose his name because apparently he was also super handsome? Lol, who knows if he really was, since few records exist from this time.

Shouxiang (受降）was a designation given to three cities north of the Yellow River during the Tang dynasty. It means 'to accept surrender'. They were intended as outposts to defend against invaders from the north.

Lu Ten/Hanxin

I don’t know what their ship name should be. Suggestions are welcome xD

Anyways, by now it should be clear that Yao and Shang are the most annoying wingmen ever, but that's not to say they aren't good at what they do. Also, I was going to tag this fic with 'Fake relationship', because people are suckers for that trope, myself included, but I felt bad, because it goes on for less than a chapter.

I've been thinking about how heteronormative this Avatarverse is intended to be. Obviously Lu Ten, Hanxin, and their close friends among the 18th company (not necessarily everyone) are pretty much okay with them being together. The magistrate doesn’t express any surprise or disgust at their relationship either. I would guess that incidental homosexual attraction is regarded as a normal phenomenon, for example in wartime, when there aren't any women around. But the expectation upon resumption of civilian society would be that each man goes home, gets married to a nice girl, and has a family and such. That expectation might be more relaxed or more enforced depending on social status. Wow, what a great non-answer to my own question :D

(not so) Fun facts about the writing of this chapter

I wrote the first draft of Hanxin's love confession on June 16th, 2016. You see, I have no self-control and just write the scenes I like the most, even if they're ages away. Then I have to go and figure out what happened in between, which is why you get months-long delays D:

On June 16th, I had just moved into my apartment in Memphis for a summer internship, with no food and no car in a city with appalling public transportation options. So the logical thing to do was of course walk 2.5 miles to Kroger and back in 90 degree (F) / 95% humidity weather, carrying two heavy bags of groceries. As you might have guessed, the left was heavier than the right. My shoulder ached for days. Also, I think that day I carried the groceries up 10 flights of stairs because the elevator was broken. Geez, I really got fit that summer.

The sex scene was written in late September or early October on a bench in the park. I was just sitting there minding my own business when this guy came and sat down next to me, even though there are five empty benches all around us. What do you think he wanted? Duh. So, we maintained stilted conversation for a bit. I'm an awkward person to begin with, and the conversation was made all the more awkward by the fact that yes, Mr. Creep, I do in fact know what you want from me, but I'm too polite to tell you to fuck off.

And at some points he just sat silently and watched me write. I think I wrote as far as Hanxin getting their pants off before I was like, I can't do this. But before I left, he had to seize his chance, so all in quick succession, he was like, "I would like to make you my girlfriend" — "Can I walk you home?" — "Can I have just a kiss?" So predictable. No, NO, and hell NO. I booked my shit out of there and across the street, looking over my shoulder for the whole five blocks home. He did get my number, but I immediately blocked that shit, and fortunately he didn’t persist. I haven't been back to the park since then.

It's just really depressing that once you get to a certain age, every girl has at least a dozen of these kinds of stories, that it's pretty much standard. But lesson learned: if you feel like a situation is not right, get the fuck out of there immediately. Don’t worry about hurting the other person's feelings; your safety is more important than that. Seriously, it could save your life.

Miscellaneous

This is kind of a throwaway bit of trivia, but I originally intended for Sang to be a girl disguised as a man (yes, like Mulan), which is why Lu Ten asked her to take care of Hope and Yi. But I couldn’t think of a way to reveal this without the chapter getting even longer and more unwieldy, so I'm just telling you now. It's not going to be a vital plot point.

Also, I know the death foreshadowing in some bits of this chapter may have you worried, but do not fear. All the main characters will get their happy ending, because I do NOT do sad endings. Everything up until the end can be angst upon angst, but the story isn't over until you find out that everyone you love lives. I have a friend who has a bad habit of recommending me epic, amazing series with one fatal flaw, which is that one half of the star-crossed couple DIES. Examples: Death Note, BBC Sherlock, Nirvana in Fire, probably more that I can't think of right now. And…yeah, I am not here for that shit. I do not suffer through hours and hours of screen time just to witness my beloved characters' deaths, no thank you.


	35. Book 4 Chapter 8: One Soul in Two Bodies

For reference, Zuko and Azula are about ten at this time.

Conspiracies (aka me gushing about _Nirvana in Fire_ )

In the show, I've always felt it was too convenient that Lu Ten died, Iroh abandoned the siege and wandered off grieving in the spirit world, and Ozai was like, oh hey, what a lucky chance for me, let's usurp the throne! It's too coincidentally beneficial for him. However, I didn’t get the idea for Ozai to try and sabotage Lu Ten until I watched the Chinese period drama _Nirvana in Fire_ (yes, that's half the reason for my late updates). It's SO GOOD. So many plots and conspiracies and beautiful costumes and feelings. The acting and writing and filming is astoundingly thorough and well-thought out. If you haven't, you should definitely watch it. It's 52 40-minute episodes all available on YouTube (I don't know if the English subs are good, though).

I got to thinking: what if Ozai decided to target Lu Ten in order to weaken Iroh's emotional stability, resulting in potential missteps on the battlefield and career-ending disgrace for the Dragon of the West? I don’t know if Shinu could have known Ozai that well in reality, but I made them contemporaries so that Ozai would have someone to carry out his orders at the front. Ultimately, he wants Lu Ten promoted so that he'll start feeling the strain of being responsible for so many people, and maybe do something rash and get himself killed. I'm still working on how exactly that plays out.

Hanxin's network of spies for Lu Ten's benefit is also inspired by Mei Changsu, the protagonist of _Nirvana in Fire._ Basically, he's a super smart strategist who supports Prince Jing to gain the Emperor's favor over his brothers, the other princes, and eventually become the Crown Prince. Originally Prince Jing is not a fan of scheming strategists like Changsu, but he grows to love him dearly, which is ironic for reasons I won't get into here because I don’t want to spoil everything. Basically, Mei Changsu knows everything—that's why [his fur cloaks ](https://thefeatheredfan.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/22.jpg)are so big: they're full of secrets!

Firebending flute training

I debated for a while how many soldiers to give Lu Ten and still have it be realistic. Jumping from fifty to five hundred is even straining my credibility, so I left it at that. All odd numbered companies are firebenders, and all even numbered are nonbenders. The companies under Lu Ten still have their own captains and move as whole units, but they have to answer to him now, and that includes playing in a flute choir for bending practice.

I speak from experience when I say that flute is very hard to learn as a beginner, but once you actually figure out how to blow into it and make sound, it's much easier. You have to direct your airstream in a very targeted fashion through the hole. You can blow all the air you want, but if it's not going the right direction, it doesn’t matter how much volume you use, it will not make a sound. The idea I had with this was the same as with Zuko learning Tsungi horn back in _save some face._ Firebending comes from the breath. If you use a lot of air or firepower needlessly, instead of being precise in your blasts, you waste energy and tire out quickly.

I was also thinking of Lo and Li when I had Hanxin be the one training the firebenders. Lo and Li are not benders, yet they are the ones in charge of Azula's training. They can spot her weaknesses and provide feedback on the theory of bending, even if they can't do it themselves, kind of like athletes who have retired but still coach younger students.

For the record, I think Hanxin can play at least six instruments—lute (of which there are various types), flute, Tsungi horn, guzheng, xiao, and erhu; seven if you count singing.

Chey

I always liked Chey, even though he barely got five minutes of screen time in the whole show ("The Deserter" is his only appearance). He's the second person to desert the Fire Nation Army after Jeong Jeong, three years prior to the events of A:tla, according to Wikia. That confuses me though, because didn’t Piandao desert long before that? So Chey should be the third person to desert. Unless they're counting Jeong Jeong as the first deserter of the Navy, and Piandao as the first deserter of the Army. …Never mind, it's not important. Anyways, Chey comes across as kind of weird but essentially a good person, and I thought it would be nice for him to be an ally of Lu Ten in the war.

I made up the fact that he comes from Yu Dao, the FN colony in Earth Kingdom. Maybe he would be kind of looked down upon by his fellows because he's a colonial. I just like the idea that the army consists of people from all walks of life, all mixed together and equal in death. Ooh, that got a bit morbid, my bad.

Armor

I am not an armor expert, and the vague description I gave can be better supplemented with images. Once again, a lot of it is heavily inspired by watching _Nirvana in Fire_ (can you tell I am so excited about it?)

This is [Princess Mu Nihuang](https://thefeatheredfan.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/21.jpg), who is a badass general of a huge army in Yunnan. Her lovely armor inspired the blue and silver color scheme for Lu Ten's armor, but the plates of the armor look more like this:

This is the actor [Huo Jianhua](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pGTer3tyVNU/VcI5ZcxqX9I/AAAAAAAAAfQ/LooDmVEurm8/s640/14e1cb578b5ecd92ff9f0ebc538f0c8d.jpg), who is not in _Nirvana in Fire._ I actually don’t know what role he is playing here, nor anything about him except that he's Taiwanese, shares my birthday, and my mom really likes him. The scaly design of the armor made me think of dragon scales.

This is [Prince Jing ](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c7/9e/90/c79e90acbc927454e3d0506c6eda6241.jpg)and his lovely armor. Its structure is a little closer than Nihuang's to how I imagine Lu Ten's armor. The shoulder pad things are bigger and the skirt is bulkier. And oh, the red and gold—very alpha male. He is so perfect—if nothing else, watch _Nirvana in Fire_ for him; he is just so gorgeous and stoic and _good_.

Finally, this is the inspiration for the helmet: the [Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin](http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/0/03/Dragon_helm_of_dor_lomin_by_gtmais-d5nm0ed.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160402093319), worn by the dragon-slayer Túrin Turambar in _The Silmarillion._ Never mind that it's stylistically very different from ancient Chinese designs; it was just too cool for me not to include.

Anyways, so, some kind of amalgamation of all of the above pictures, should give you a decent mental image.

One Soul in Two Bodies

The chapter title comes from this bit in _Bakuman,_ a manga about mangakas from years ago. Takagi and Mashiro are two schoolboys who form a mangaka duo (Takagi writes the story, Mashiro draws), and at one point Takagi basically screams for everyone to hear that he and Mashiro are like "one soul in two bodies". That was when I was like, yep, all illusions of heterosexuality are hereby shattered. *pops champagne bottles*

It happened again in _Nirvana in Fire,_ actually (you thought I was done with that show? NOPE) towards the end, when Prince Jing says, "You may regard Sir Su [Mei Changsu] and me as one person." In context, someone wanted to impart classified information to Prince Jing but didn’t want to do so with Changsu present, but Prince Jing is not having any of that nonsense. Like, do people just say these kinds of things about their completely platonic same-sex friends? "We are essentially one person"?? No, they do not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, can you tell that I just learned how to embed images into AO3 chapters and am excitedly using every opportunity I can to practice? :D I did include hyperlinks to each image just in case the pictures don't show up.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	36. Book 4 Chapter 9: Dragonslayer

A little characterization

Shinu is more specifically Kongming's father's sister's husband (Chinese 姑丈), but fortunately in English you can just get away with 'uncle'. I feel a little bad for him because I've written him to be so mean-spirited and callous when in canon… well, his brief screen time doesn’t give us much canon characterization anyways; all we know is that he doesn’t like it when others like Zhao challenge his authority, but that's hardly a defining feature. I tried to do a little better by Kongming by making him at least feel guilty about plotting against Lu Ten. He's in over his head…

Random place names

This is a map of all the locations in this chapter. Danshui (淡水) means 'fresh water'; I just named it after a place in Taiwan. I've never been, but apparently it's very scenic. Shizuishan (石嘴山): 'stone mouth mountain', the site of a coal fire which has been burning in Ningxia, northwest China, for over a hundred years. There are thousands of underground fires throughout the country that are ignited by mining operations, lightning, brush fires, and other means, and many of them reach the surface, causing awful air pollution and contributing to global warming. They are very difficult to put out, but the government doesn’t have much interest in trying unless a certain fire endangers mining production interests.

What is going on? Help

(This is as much for my own benefit as it is for my readers, to make sure I'm not completely not making sense - just partially.)

Kongming is spying on Lu Ten for Shinu. What info does Lu Ten even have that’s worth spying for? Shinu seems to think there's something there. Kongming receives an enemy messenger bird that got shot down over their camp, brings it to Shinu. It turns out to be signed from the Dai Li. Shinu believes that the Dai Li want to lure a contingent of Fire Nation soldiers to a site just southwest of Lake Laogai. They want the Fire Nation to think that this site is a vantage point (because of the underground fire), when in fact it is a vantage point for the Dai Li (because of the underground fire).

Shinu realizes the latter and decides to pretend to walk into the trap by sending Lu Ten's contingent to the site under the guise of General Iroh's orders. Lu Ten is not told about the coal fire, and he will be clueless when the Dai Li suddenly attack, with the force of the coal fire on their side. His inevitable defeat will destroy General Iroh's composure and battle acumen. Then Shinu can swoop in and become the Fire Nation's new five-star general.

Why is the fire a vantage point for the Dai Li? Isn't fire good for firebenders?

I'm going to keep this to myself for now, but you will find out in two chapters when the battle takes place.

How does Shinu know who the Dai Li are?

I don’t have a good answer for that, actually. It's unlikely that the average Earth Kingdom citizen would know who they are, let alone an officer of the Fire Nation. But Shinu strikes me as a kind of guy who would value knowledge no matter what its source. Maybe he went to the Spirit Library (like Zhao did) to get information on how to possibly win the war, and learned about the Dai Li there. Maybe he found out from interrogating Earth Kingdom prisoners. But this knowledge is not at all widespread among the ranks.

Why are the Dai Li getting involved in the war?  
They normally are more of an internal affairs division, but if the city itself is threatened, I think they may just have an interest in preserving it.

Miscellany  
The Chinese lunar calendar is behind the Gregorian calendar by about a month. So while January is the 1st month in the Western year, February would be the first month of the Chinese year, although sometimes Chinese New Year takes place in late January; it varies. I don’t think anyone uses the traditional month names these days, but I looked them up here: <https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/guidebook/chinese-calendar.htm>. According to this, Locust Tree month is the fourth month of the lunar year, approximately corresponding to the month of May. Conveniently, the show manages to skirt any references to months, whether in the Eastern or Western tradition.

According to my mother, if your handwriting is big, that means you have a big heart. Personally, I don’t think there's a correlation. My handwriting is always in cursive and looks kind of messy to the untrained eye, but I'm very organized, so…?


	37. Book 4 Chapter 10: Red Autumn Pomegranate

Red Autumn Pomegranate

The vintages you see people drinking in C-dramas always have such classy names, but I couldn’t think of anything like that, so I just came up with 秋榴紅，which is 'autumn pomegranate red', because pomegranates ripen in the autumn. Why pomegranates? Honestly, just because I really like pomegranates, even though I hardly ever get to eat them, and they're so messy to eat. But they're so good! Also, in Chinese tradition they symbolize fertility, because of all the seeds. Not sure how applicable that is in this situation. If you want to go with Greek tradition and the myth of Hades and Persephone, rebirth and rejuvenation and all that fun stuff, that's nice too. 

Edit 10/27/17: I ate a pomegranate today! My parents sent me one from our backyard. The seeds were really small, but so good!!

Qingming and Cold Food Festivals 

Hanxin's description of the origins of Qingming ("清明節", or 'festival of pure brightness') actually pertains to the Cold Food Festival (寒食節). The loyal minister, Jie Zitui, and his master, Chong Er (who went on to become Duke Wen of Jin) lived during the Spring and Autumn period (~600s BC). Whether or not this story was actually the origin of Cold Food Festival is questionable, but over time, it has been adopted into Chinese tradition and kind of lumped in along with Qingming Festival as a day of ancestor worship. Traditionally, people go home to where their families are buried, sweep their graves, make offerings, share a meal with their family, etc. These festivals usually take place around April 4-5 each year.

I chose to set Lu Ten's birthday at this time because I think his birthday actually is in the spring. _Book 2: Earth_ takes place in the spring while Aang is doing earthbending, and in "Tales of Ba Sing Se", Iroh says "Happy birthday, my son; I wish I could have helped you." And then sings "Leaves from the Vine" which I always skip because it is too sad :'(

Princess Consort Jing 

There is no canon name for Iroh's wife (nor any mention of her at all, in fact), so I chose to make her Consort Jing (靜妃), from Nirvana in Fire, who is basically the most level-headed, loving, and wise mother anyone could wish for. Technically her title would be Princess Consort (王妃, aka wife of a prince), not Princess (公主), because she married and wasn’t born into the royal family.

Does Iroh really think his son is being unfilial for not remembering his late mother? I don’t think so. It's likely just Lu Ten projecting his guilt, which is kind of sad. After all, she died over a decade ago.

I was in fact thinking of that bit when Sokka tells Toph that he can't really remember his mother's face, because she died so long ago, and Katara kind of took her place. And that happens. Just because you don’t think of the departed all the time, doesn’t mean you love them any less.

Random stuff 

The drill plans Lu Ten was reading in the beginning are in fact the drill that Azula commands to bore into the outer wall of Ba Sing Se, but it's unlikely that they will be put to a similar use in this universe.

This chapter was titled Sex Interludes in my drafts for quite a while, until it became less of an interlude and more of the whole chapter itself.

I really like the idea of Lake Laogai as a fancy resort for the Ba Sing Se upper class citizens. It gives a new meaning to that brainwashing phrase Long Feng uses: "The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai." Obviously, when the Dai Li moved in under the lake, no one was allowed to go there anymore for fear of discovering something they shouldn’t. Also, it's mentioned twice that the water is warm - not like hot springs kind of warm, but rather, not freezing kind of warm. Why is it warm, though? Well, surely it couldn't be because there's a huge fire underground nearby? :D


	38. Book 4 Chapter 11: Battle of Lake Laogai

Oh no Lu Ten/Hanxin why do bad things happen to good people?

  * Me @Hanxin while writing this: _that's a fucking flimsy excuse for a breakup and you know it._ But I love these idiots too much to keep them apart for long, though, so it's not like you're going to be suffering through much more of this.
  * I don’t remember if I mentioned this before, but there is definitely an Achilles and Patroclus (from _The Song of Achilles_ ) inspiration with these two—Lu Ten losing his shit when Hanxin is injured, getting all pissy and refusing to fight when he doesn’t get his way, etc…



The Battle of Lake Laogai

  * I don’t know if it makes sense for the Dai Li to reveal themselves this early in the plot. Now the Fire Nation knows about them, but it's not like they can do much about the mysterious earthbenders who live in the lake. Anyways, after the battle, the Dai Li retreated to their lake again, and now they're kind of just there. But they'll be back! They're too important of a plot point not to address here.
  * Their motivation is actually similar to Shinu's: they have found out about the illustrious Azure Dragon who's more importantly the son of the great General Iroh who is almost guaranteed to break through the inner wall within a year—unless his son dies and he's so distraught that he gives up the war. So now Lu Ten is the target of two plots, and between Shinu and the Dai Li, he's bound to meet his end sooner or later.
  * The coal fire: ...I spent like two chapters setting it up, and then I only barely mentioned it, why do I do all these mental gymnastics. A huge underground fiery fire would seem like an advantage to firebenders, right? But in addition to fire, it produces massive amounts of poisonous gas like sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lots of things that kill you very fast. Not something you want to be near, and definitely not something that the firebenders will be able to use to their advantage.
    * Remember last chapter Lu Ten was taking a bath in the lake and noticed the water was warm? Yep, this is why.


  * How Lu Ten lost his firebending: so I didn’t really explain in the chapter, because Lu Ten himself doesn’t know, but it's like nerve gas. Real life nerve gas (e.g. Sarin, organophosphates, mustard gas) paralyzes you by blocking acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme in your body that degrades acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that contracts your muscles. Basically, you can't relax your muscles, so you're stuck like you are, and it also paralyzes your respiratory muscles, so you stop breathing and die.
    * This is slightly different, though. The grenade thing that the Dai Li threw exploded when it hit Lu Ten's fiery lightning, and whatever was inside vaporized like gas. When he inhaled it, it blocked his chi receptors, which I think are like his chakras (pools of swirling chi, according to Guru Pathik). So it's like chi-blocking but using aerosolized gas instead of punching people.
    * Anyways, this is actually meant to serve a plot point eventually, and not just putting Lu Ten through hell. Unfortunately, he's not going to get his firebending back for a while :(



Why's Iroh being such a terrible father?

You know, he has a lot of things on his mind, like the drill, maybe, to bust through the inner wall. It does seem rather callous that he hardly even reaches out to Lu Ten, I thought so too, but this is Iroh before his son died.

It does beg the question in response to what he said at Lu Ten's memorial in "Tales of Ba Sing Se": "If only I could have helped you"—well, why couldn’t you have helped him? It is so sad; gah, now I'm making myself cry.

The Serenity Prayer

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer)

I really like this verse, even though I hardly ever practice serenity with things in my life that can't be changed. I first used it in one of my old Death Note fics from years ago that I reread the other day, so hopefully no one here has read it.


	39. Book 4 Chapter 12: Battle of Jingxing

A long time coming

According to my records, the part that starts "You should know" up until "I don’t know what I did to deserve you" was originally written on 6/17/17, but I feel like I actually wrote it much earlier than that. So yeah, the story has been barreling towards this point for ages, but it just takes so long to write.

This chapter was really important to round off Lu Ten's development so far, because it culminates in _philautia,_ or self-love. The past chapters have all dealt with different types of love: _ludus, agape, storge, philia, eros,_ and _pragma,_ although there were also a bunch of non-thematic chapters necessary for the plot, because ultimately this is not really a war story, but a love story. If you want a war story, you can turn on the TV and watch the news every day. Anyways, I can guarantee you one more happy, love-filled chapter before shit hits the fan.

Also, I don’t think Hanxin has cried at all throughout this book (before this chapter). I really think he needs to do that more. Obviously crying all the time is not good, and probably a sign that you need help, but when you're sad or stressed, crying is good, even if it doesn't actually solve your problems. I love crying, although it always makes me really cold afterwards.

Historical and Fictional Battle Stuff

Qizheng (aka Sun Tzu of this universe) and _The Art of War_

  * "…commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed" (君命有所不受）
  * "he will win who… is not interfered with by the sovereign" （將能而君不御者勝）
  * Hanxin's usage here is probably not quite what _The Art of War_ was suggesting. Sun Tzu's point here is more like, the Emperor, who sits on his butt all day in his comfortable palace far from the battlefield, should not interfere with the decisions of the general on the frontier, who works his ass off all day to protect the nation. But here, Shinu is actually making decisions based on his evaluation of the war effort at the front (and also his desire to eliminate Lu Ten, but that's beside the point)



_Dao_ vs _jian:_ according to my (possibly inaccurate) understanding of weapons, _dao_ is a single-edged (sharp on one side) weapon, and typically you have two of them at once, or at least Zuko and Lu Ten do. And _jian_ is double-edged (sharp on both sides), and typically you only carry one. It was quite a neat idea on the part of the creators to have Zuko wield dual swords signifying the two sides of him, good and bad. But does that mean people with dual swords are intrinsically two-faced and duplicitous? No, Lu Ten, get over yourself; you are a sweet cinnamon roll and your swords do not make a difference as to who you are. *smh, why are my characters like this.

[Battle of Jingxing:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jingxing) this was an actual battle between the real Han Xin and the Zhao army in 205 BC. It was a pretty crucial one in getting Han Xin's name out there, and he defeated them with his thirty thousand troops against the enemy's two hundred thousand. But for the life of me, I could not figure out how his strategy worked or how to transpose it in an interesting/exciting way to this story, so I just borrowed the names (Taihang Mountains, Jingxing pass, and the enemy general Chen Yu) and changed the story.

The Battle of Iron Hills is not a real battle, and I never actually talked about it in detail, just referenced it briefly in chapters 6 and 10, so don’t worry, you're not going crazy. I'm just making stuff up as I go.

I really like writing about them plotting stuff; it's just so hard to actually think up a plausible plot beforehand and make it seem all clever. The woes of writing what you _don't_ know…

I feel shaky about whether or not Chey could possibly lightning bend. It seemed like only people in the royal family could do it (Azula, Ozai, Iroh), though by the time of Korra, a lot more people could do it. So… oh well. Let's just say he could. He was kind of a strange guy, but I wouldn’t say he was incompetent, so I'll give him a chance.

I am a pluviophile

Flash floods, holy shit. So amazing! I visited Antelope Canyon in Arizona twice on one of those exhausting Chinese bus tours (if you're from the West Coast you probably know what I'm talking about :P), and it's basically this collection of tunnels carved through a mountain by water over… millions of years, probably, and you can see all sorts of fantastic shapes as the sunlight filters down through the spiral tunnels. But you really DON'T want to be inside if it rains, as there sometimes is a flash flood in the desert summertime, and you will drown; they warned us when we visited there. While writing this chapter, I watched a lot of videos on flash floods and people who run away from flash floods for the fun of it, apparently, and here are some of my favorites: [here, ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yCnQuILmsM&t=105s)[here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VD5GxluHN8&t=72s) It's just crazy how powerful nature can be.

Another thing: I really like the feeling of the air just before a storm. It's so electric; you can feel the low pressure and humid air hanging over you, and you can just taste the rain before it falls. People look at me kind of weirdly when I talk about how much I love rain and storms, which annoys me, like… why do you want it to be sunny all the time. I get personally offended when people see that it's raining and are all, "Ugh, it's so disgusting out today! >.<" But that's just a weird thing about me. After all, I am the cloud whisperer ;P

Hanxin's backstory

Hanxin's brief story about crawling under the bully's legs is a true story from his real life counterpart. I definitely would not have come up with that myself, as it seems a little quaint and bizarrely amoral by modern storytelling standards. But for some reason I really enjoyed it. Obviously, most hotblooded young men, when issued such a challenge, would immediately stab him, never mind the consequences. But Han Xin was so logical, thinking, _is it better to die while proving I'm not a coward, or to live in spite of being thought of as a coward?_ So he lived, and he went on to be a great military general and prove that he certainly was not a coward.

Also, after he became famous, he really did go back and reward the bully with an official position, how nice ^^. Really, he was such an admirable guy. Now I have the most random historical crush on him. The most amazing thing is that Han Xin was only in his 20s during most of these brilliant military campaigns. And then the sad thing is, after Liu Bang, the guy he was supporting, became Emperor Gaozu, first of the Han Dynasty, he started to suspect Han Xin of plotting a rebellion (which was patently untrue). Eventually he had Han Xin executed terribly; you can read about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Xin#Legend). Actually, just read the whole article; you will fall in love with Han Xin too.

Edit 3/21/18: Okay so it was not actually Emperor Han Gaozu who had him killed, but the Empress Lu Zhi, who was by all accounts a horrible woman who ordered many gruesome executions of people she hated. But I think Gaozu wasn't exactly complaining when he found out what the Empress did, just breathed a sigh of relief like, phew, at least now I don't have to worry about being stabbed in the back, ugh. 

The bully's name was not actually Du Fu, though; I made that up. According to Baidu Baike (kind of like Chinese Wikipedia), he was a butcher (屠夫，or tu fu).

Side note: Lu Ten doesn't really want to kill Du Fu. I think he probably just says that to amuse Hanxin.


	40. Book 4 Chapter 13: His Heart's Song

Like Father, Like Son

I loved writing playful Lu Ten with Hanxin in this chapter. Lu Ten is his father's son, and he would love teasing dear Hanxin relentlessly (and then turning all serious in the next second). As for ginseng tea and its purported ability to give you a boost in the bedroom, uh… take it with a grain of salt. Obviously there's thousands of years' worth of anecdotal evidence from TCM, and maybe a few scientific studies of questionable validity… but hey, it might at least give you a placebo effect, so there's that. Ironically, I was rewatching "The Southern Air Temple", and Iroh mentions that his favorite tea is ginseng, so like, were the writers taking a dig at his… vitality? Later in book 2, I remember his favorite changed to jasmine, so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Lu Ten takes after his father, a brilliant prodigy of a child, but fortunately without Azula's cruel streak. So it's curious that he would connect more with Zuko.

Continuity in Correspondence

I had to go back to _save some face_ chapter [four](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7009621/chapters/16237217) and [five](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7009621/chapters/16345409) to make sure I got things straight. Zuko sends Lu Ten his picture first, and Lu Ten replies by sending his picture as well. I guess that was just a thing they did in ancient times; these days we have Snapchat.

And in "Tales of Ba Sing Se", Iroh has the portrait of Lu Ten, so I had to make sure that was included here. Isn't he lovely? :) It's also the only official representation we have of adult Lu Ten. I imagine he looks a lot like Iroh did in his younger days. I don’t quite dig the flourishing sideburns, which kind of seems to be Fire Nation fashion, but that's just personal preference.

Birthdays

Zuko and Azula are born August 31st or so? That corresponds to sometime in the 7th month of the lunar calendar. But Lu Ten doesn’t get Zuko's letter until around October :( To give you some idea, the final scene of this chapter takes place in November. The final battle (occurring next chapter), will take place in February, right around the 3-year mark of the beginning of Lu Ten's wartime experiences. God, that’s a long time. In the future, I might publish a log with all the important dates noted… or just change everything to Gregorian calendar, because keeping track of time has been giving me more trouble than I care to deal with.

Doom foreshadowing

I'm kind of mad at Lu Ten for not suspecting Kongming at all, but he's just too Good and sweet… ahh, why do all the good people die young. The idea is that he doesn’t know that the other two battalions should be there to help, because Kongming took that out of the letter. So he just thinks that he's going to throw himself at a force ~7 times their size and sacrifice themselves for the Fire Nation's victory :/

Song Translations

Can you tell that I'm weak for anyone who has a way with music like Hanxin? So is Lu Ten. Singing together is just like… sacred harmony; you have to be so in tune and mentally synced… it's beautiful. But when the two musicians don’t have chemistry… it's terrible.

The West Wind's Words

This is a children's song that my mother taught me when I was young. You know, I was such a cute child. When I was nine or ten, we would take long walks around the neighborhood just singing songs from my mother's childhood, not caring if anyone looked at us weirdly. I mean, I would be mortified to do that now, but in private, sure. It's really lovely, and I'm linking a version [here](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/172965140377/lin-junyi-sean-lin-and-huang-yunling-sing-the) (link goes to my Tumblr, because I wanted to put the subtitles and translation in the caption too).

I just got so sad, because the years are slipping away from Lu Ten, and he doesn’t really get to see Zuko's growth except in random intervals through his letters. The 'you' referenced in this song is plural, so it's like every time the West Wind blows around, it's talking to a bunch of little kids who live there.

The West Wind's Words 

| 

西風的話  
  
---|---  
  
Last year when I came home, you had just donned new clothes

| 

去年我回來 你們剛穿新棉袍  
  
This year, I visit and find you flush with growth [literally: "you got fat and tall"]

| 

今年我來看你們 你們變胖又變高  
  
Do you remember the pond full of lotus seed heads?

| 

你們可記得 池裏荷花變蓮蓬  
  
Though the flowers wilt, fear not: I'll dye the leaves in red.

| 

花少不愁沒顔色 我把樹葉都染紅  
  
When the Wind Rises

Click [here](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/167683086822/%E7%BF%BB%E5%94%B1%E6%85%95%E5%AF%92-%E9%A2%A8%E8%B5%B7%E6%99%82-%E7%91%AF%E7%90%8A%E6%A6%9C-the-wind-rises-nirvana-in) to listen. "When the Wind Rises" as well as "The West Wind's Words" are how I imagine Hanxin's voice to sound. Too beautiful for this earth, right? This is the ending credits song of _Nirvana in Fire_ (that show has influenced me more than I ever thought it would) and I cannot believe how fitting it is for Lu Ten and Hanxin. It's just too gorgeous.

Also, it's not a coincidence that Hanxin's songs are thematically linked to wind. I feel like he's such a free spirit, and Lu Ten is his only "earthly attachment". But if for example, Harmonic Convergence were to occur in this universe, he would totally get airbending, and it would be perfect: fire/air <3 I'm not saying that's going to happen, but… ask me again in five years, when this series is hopefully finished and I'm thinking about writing epilogues during all the free time I won't have :)

I took some liberties with translating this one to make it more… song-like. It all rhymes in Chinese, but it's harder to rhyme in English. Obviously, it doesn’t _have_ to rhyme; free verse is just fine, but I'm old school like that, and as long as it doesn’t stray too far from the original meaning, what's to fear? I've included some more literal annotations alongside the poetic version for your edification (lol, I love this word).

When the Wind Rises

| 

風起時

| 

   
  
---|---|---  
  
Change is the only constant on this earth

| 

變幻  風雲幾卷

| 

The wind and clouds change [fig., a volatile situation]  
  
Chaos strikes fear into hearts like a disease

| 

亂世起  驚瀾

| 

The disordered world raises waves of fear  
  
The blood still flows, forgotten, without worth

| 

血仍殷  何人心念

| 

Blood still flows, but who remembers it?  
  
The blaze incinerates all hope for peace.

| 

烈火  清平願

| 

   
  
 

| 

.

| 

   
  
Swords of wisdom cut me off from my love

| 

慧劍  借别紅顔

| 

紅顔 - blushing (red) face, [fig.: beautiful woman, a way to refer to your beloved]  
  
With no will to live my remaining years

| 

無意續  餘年

| 

   
  
The palace still towers proudly, high above

| 

帝闕巍  豪氣仍在

| 

   
  
Oaths of pure hearts rend the night in tears.

| 

冰心  誓破長夜天

| 

冰心 - heart pure as ice  
  
 

| 

.

| 

   
  
The old red bow hangs on the wall, untried

| 

昔年朱弓  壁上空懸

| 

   
  
An endless march, armor stained and wronged

| 

征途望斷  鐵甲猶寒

| 

鐵甲猶寒 - the armor is cold (寒), but in this regard, 寒 means 'disappointed, disillusioned'  
  
The vision in my mind cannot be kept inside

| 

明眸在心  青山難掩

| 

Bright eyes in my heart, the green mountains cannot be hidden  
  
To realize the world's beauty is my heart's song

| 

江山如畫  是我心言

| 

The rivers and mountains like paintings, they are the words of my heart.  
  
 

| 

.

| 

   
  
The mountains lie like fallen spears; Who can mend Heaven's tear?

| 

關山横槊  誰可補天

| 

   
  
A spear stained with the martyr's blood: the youth of yesteryear,

| 

碧血長槍  昨日少年

| 

   
  
A lone shadow, returns home without a beacon to light his way

| 

孤影歸途  不見烽烟

| 

   
  
A thousand autumns etched on our hearts for latter days

| 

一筆千秋  後人心間

| 

   
  
The wind rises; the clouds scatter.

| 

風起  雲散

| 

   
  
NSFW kind of

I'm weirdly glad that Lu Ten wasn't around to give Zuko the birds and bees talk, because it would be laced with excessive flower comparisons and poetry and Zuko would just be like w.t.f. Idk, maybe I'm taking the fire lilies and rain metaphor too far, but Hanxin totally seems like someone who would soliloquize about that during sex, and Lu Ten would be all about it. You know what, I tried. Sex is so hard to write. You're constantly like, oh, no, how are they positioned now? Where are everyone's hands? Did I already say 'pleasure' too many times? God damn it *throws computer out the window in frustration*

"I am to see to it that I do not lose you." - Walt Whitman, "To a Stranger"

Passion of the Cut Sleeve

I only learned about this thanks to this [awesome art](https://meteodesigns.deviantart.com/art/Emperor-Ai-of-Han-Dong-Xian-146711764) by MeteoDesigns. The passion of the cut sleeve (斷袖之癖，duànxiùzhīpǐ) comes from this story and is a euphemism for homosexual love in Chinese. The sad thing is that apparently Emperor Ai (given name Liu Xin) was not really that great of an emperor. He was very bright, and his uncle, the previous emperor, had no children so he decided to make Liu Xin his heir. But once he was emperor, there was a lot of corruption, puppetry by other forces, and unjust targeting of the supporters of the previous emperor(s). Plus, he was just so into his lover Dong Xian that he promoted him to the highest position in the court even though he was totally unqualified and suppressed a lot of dissenters who said that's probably not a good idea. The thing is, I can see Lu Ten wanting to spoil Hanxin rotten like that once he has him back home, but I'm thinking Hanxin will have the sense not to let him do that.

Anyways, just like the real-life Han Xin of the early Han Dynasty, Dong Xian had a sad end. Emperor Ai died suddenly, someone else seized power, and Dong Xian committed suicide. Unfortunately, that was very commonplace for spouses and entire families in the dynasties, because if you didn’t kill yourself after your sovereign/beloved/whoever was protecting you died, someone else would probably do it for you as revenge :(


	41. Book 4 Chapter 14: Inflection Point

The Song of Achilles 

I was going to tag this as "wearing each other's clothes" couples' trope, but I thought that might be too much. Although the circumstances are a bit different, nothing says pain as clearly as "I'm going to wear your armor into battle and pretend to be you even though that spells almost certain death for me." On the upside, neither of them die, which I think is a vast improvement from Patroclus and Achilles' sad ending.

Writing Choices: What Goes and What Stays 

I've been plotting and writing towards this point for so long that when I finally came to it, I realized a lot of parts were ones I didn’t want to write. For some reason I just felt dwelling excessively on plot points would have made everything feel overwrought and somehow dampening to the emotionality of Lu Ten's death. So I skipped stuff like: 1) Kongming's confession / how Hanxin figured out he was the traitor, 2) details on Hanxin's last stand and how he managed to get away with his life, 3) how Dai Li agents found Lu Ten, 4) how Lu Ten reacted waking up alone in a strange place, 5) what happened with Shinu.

With Shinu, it was more because I got bored with him as an antagonist, so I didn’t bother to write out his ending. I vaguely sketched out the idea that he felt some remorse at plotting Lu Ten's death and also at the death of Kongming. He ended up refusing the promotion that Ozai promised him and requested to retire from the war in Ba Sing Se, transferring to Pohuai Fortress with the Yuyan archers as it is in canon. So that's the last we'll see of him.

We also aren't going to see any more of Iroh and Hanxin in this book. There's only so many grieving scenes I can fit in before I start crying and you start crying and no one can read or write anything because we're all crying—okay.

Anatomy and Physiology 

Oh, my favorite part. This is totally why I became a med student, so that I can write the bloody gore parts of battle fics. No, actually. But since I've dissected a cadaver, I can confidently say that Lu Ten will be fine. You can live without your gallbladder—lots of people get their gallbladder taken out when they get gallstones because it's just too much trouble. The gallbladder only functions to store and concentrate bile from the liver, not produce it.

~~Linguistics interlude!!~~ Gall (both the organ and its bile secretions) in Chinese is 膽 (dan), which also means courage. And in English, gall also means boldness or impudence, as well as bile! Wow, how is this possible?? Why is gall so closely associated with courage in both languages? If you don’t have your gallbladder, does that mean you're a coward? I have no answer to these questions. I just wanted to tell you about the shared meaning of gall between Chinese and English, because stuff like that excites me. Okay, end of linguistics interlude!

As long as your liver is intact, you can still make bile and pass it to your digestive tract to absorb fats. Even if part of your liver is destroyed, it's okay because 1) your liver can regenerate to some extent, and 2) you need a lot of it destroyed before it starts to impact liver function. That's why people can abuse alcohol chronically for decades before dying of liver failure.

Organs you really can't live without, I'd say, are… brain, heart, and lungs, obviously. Liver for metabolizing toxins. Pancreas for insulin and glucagon for blood sugar regulation, kidneys for excreting toxins, adrenal glands for cortisol and aldosterone, bone marrow for blood cell production. You can live without large portions of your digestive tract, (stomach and intestines) but you need at least some of it remaining, otherwise you won't absorb any nutrients from food. Anyways, I didn’t want to go into too much detail about ancient battlefield ER stuff because honestly, with a deep wound like that, there wasn't much they _could_ do in the midst of the skirmish. So Lu Ten would have died if he hadn't been found by the Dai Li.

And finally, Hanxin's speech. Er… as of now (May 2018), we haven't had our cardiovascular block (coming up in July) or our neurology block (November), so I haven't studied the relevant subjects all that well. All I have is a cursory literature review on aphemia, a neurological disorder where you can't speak (disorder of articulation), as opposed to aphasia (disorder of comprehension of speech). Hanxin didn’t get his throat cut, so it's not that. Under other circumstances, it could be selective mutism from psychological trauma, but he's not electively choosing not to speak, even if Iroh thinks that's the case. He wants to speak but cannot. Actually, we have seen a character with selective mutism in the series: Longshot of the Freedom Fighters. According to Jet, his whole village was burned down by the Fire Nation, but it's not that he's been psychologically scarred by the trauma and can't understand speech anymore, because he obviously does. It's not that he can't produce speech, because he does speak as Jet is dying under Lake Laogai. He just normally chooses not to, for his own reasons.

Anyways, that's _not_ the case with Hanxin. What I think is most plausible is that he had a stroke. Of the four case reports on pure aphemia (loss of articulation only) that I read, all four were due to cerebrovascular accident (clinical term for stroke). I won't go into detail about the brain areas affected, but basically if you have a specific part, the left precentral gyrus, that dies out due to insufficient blood supply, you can lose your speech. It sounds unlikely, because Hanxin's like… 23 and in relatively good health, whereas these patients were in their 50s and all had preexisting risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, and previous strokes. But under significant stress, I feel like it could happen, though it would probably be very unlikely to only affect that tiny part of the brain that controls speech and nothing else. Additionally, most of the patients regained their speech after a couple of days, but Hanxin doesn’t. So… I'm going to go with that. Although, I guess they wouldn’t have known about strokes back then; neurosurgery wasn’t really a thing yet.

Long Feng's disciples 

I'd been toying with the idea of good cop/bad cop for a while when it came to Long Feng and the Dai Li, but it wasn’t until recently that I came up with the idea of two disciples for Long Feng to pass on his teachings, and more specifically, two female disciples. Why did I choose to make them girls? Well to put it plainly, there's too many guys in this story. But also, I feel like Long Feng would be the kind of guy who values talent over tradition. He's the son of a poor merchant in Ba Sing Se, so he had to claw his way to power through determination, cunning, and hard work. So he doesn’t care what gender you are, as long as you can serve his purposes well.

Avatar Wikia states his Chinese characters to be 龍鳳 (dragon phoenix), although I can't find a citation for this. But that is kind of fitting. In Chinese symbolism, the emperor is associated with dragons, and the empress with phoenixes, so… dragon + phoenix = the supreme sovereign. But the phoenix part especially adds a duality to this particular antagonist.

Long (dragon) could also be his last name, and thus, any disciples he adopted would take that last name too. Long Feng picked up Long Shu and Long Niu as orphans off the street for their talent in earthbending at first and then trained them to become super Dai Li agents. He calls them Shu- _er_ and Niu- _er_ privately; - _er_ is a diminutive suffix indicating 'child' or 'person younger/smaller than me' basically, kind of like the Spanish -ito/-ita, now that I think about it. It would just be weird if he called them Long Shu and Long Niu; it would be like your parents calling you by your full name all the time, which you know they only do when you're in trouble. I’m going to talk more about the actual meanings of Long Shu and Long Niu’s names in the next chapter where it becomes significant.

* * *

Since this is a turning point (an inflection, get it?), I'm including a chronology of Lu Ten's wartime experiences by chapter (like I probably should have done all along :D). I don’t know, maybe it will just make people more confused, but hey, maybe it will be useful as a reference tool. I avoided using the names of the months throughout the whole book, because again, this is an Asian-inspired fantasy world, why would they use the Gregorian calendar… but who knows, maybe I will start doing that just to cover my ass.

NB:

Lu Ten born April 4; Zuko born August 31. Lu Ten is 17 when they embark, turns 18 shortly thereafter. Zuko is 8 when they embark, turns 9 six months later

Time stamps refer to how long it's been since they left FN.

 

1\. Children of War.  **Early February:** Lu Ten tells Zuko he must go. Leaves in mid-February.

2\. Fight Fire With Fire.  **3 weeks (early March):** meeting Hanxin and all the peeps, EK garrison. 

3\. Eyes of the Forgotten.  **5 weeks (mid-March):** Jet.  **8 weeks (April)** : Iroh. Lu Ten turns 18. 

4\. On Rebirth.  **3 months (May):** 1st battle of Maple River.

5\. Rain and Fire Lilies.  **3 months 2 weeks (mid-May):** 2nd battle of Maple River with singing.

6\. Intermezzo.  **5 months 3 weeks (August):** Hanxin puzzle box.  **6 months (August):** Teaches Hanxin to read/write. Zuko turns 9.  **8 months (October) to 1 year 4 months (June):** Letters from Zuko. Lu Ten turns 19.  

 

7\. The Butterfly Lovers.  **1 year 5 months (July):** Iroh breaks through the Outer Wall. Skirmishes. Shouxiang.  **1 year 6 months (August):** Romantic confession.

8\. One Soul in Two Bodies.  **1 year 6 months (August):** Ozai plotting, orders Shinu to promote Lu Ten. Zuko turns 10.  **1 year 8 months (October):** Hanxin plotting for Lu Ten.  **1 year 9 months (November):** Firebending flute training. Battle armor.  

 

9\. Dragon-slayer.  **2 years 1 month, 2 weeks (mid-March):** Shinu plotting, Kongming panicking.

10\. Red Autumn Pomegranate.  **2 years 2 months (early April)** : Qingming date with Hanxin. Wine and kisses. Lu Ten turns 20. 

11\. Battle of Lake Laogai.  **2 years 2 months 3 weeks (late April):** Flashbacks to battle with Dai Li.  **2 years 3 months (May):** Shinu rebukes him. Hanxin breaks up with him.  **2 years 4 months (June):** Lu Ten's depression. Angsts around for a month.

12\. Battle of Jingxing.  **2 years 5 months (July):** Bowing and emotional stuff. Plotting. The battle with Chen Yu. Aftermath: Hanxin tells him a story. Heart to heart re: the future. 

13\. His Heart's Song.  **2 years 6 months (August):** Shinu's mad. Orders Kongming. Lu Ten's bending. Zuko turns 11.  **2 years 8 months (October)** : letter from Zuko. Portraits. Sex. Passion of the cut sleeve. Kongming's news about Iroh's orders.  **2 years 9 months (late November):** final letter to Zuko while Hanxin sings. 

 

14\. Inflection Point.  **3 years (mid-February):** Devastating defeat. Iroh grieving.  **3 years 2 weeks (early March)** : Iroh leaves Ba Sing Se. Long Shu, Long Niu, Long Feng intro.


	42. Book 4 Chapter 15: can't breathe until you choke

Jook is 粥 (zhōu), or rice porridge, which Iroh made for Zuko when he recovered from his feverish angst coma after Lake Laogai.

The circlet hairpiece

Jennamite is the growing rock crystal that King Bumi was so fond of, except here it doesn’t grow by itself, but rather in response to breathing. I was excited when I thought of this, because out of the four elements, we least commonly see earthbenders bending with their mouths.

Long Niu's ponytail is a deliberate choice, on some level. In historical Chinese fashion/tradition, children could wear their hair however they liked: loose, in a ponytail, half down half up, etc., but when they came of age, they would start wearing it up. I think there might have been more variation in women's hairstyles, but essentially, once you got married, your hair stayed piled up on top of your head, and men wore their hair in topknots. Although, I just remembered that in the show, Long Feng and the Dai Li (and most male characters in Ba Sing Se) wore their hair in the queue characteristic of the Qing Dynasty.

The ponytail is symbolic of Long Niu's relatively childlike innocence. I say innocence not in the sense that she does no harm, but more of a sense of blind loyalty to Long Feng, whom she thinks serves a moral cause, as opposed to Long Shu, whom we'll see more about in the next chapter.

Torture/medical stuff

I didn’t research a whole lot about torture before writing this. I think I read two long posts by [@scripttorture](http://www.scripttorture.tumblr.com/) before I realized I would have to read some very long, gory books to get a better idea of how these things go. As far as I'm concerned, though, I just want readers to get the big picture of how Lu Ten is suffering, not to use this as a true-to-life torture manual. Three days doesn’t sound like a long time for Lu Ten's trials, but without sleeping, eating, drinking, and breathing freely, I think it would have been pretty rough.

I did look up some more articles about the crucifixion of Christ because I remember reading somewhere that he would have died of asphyxiation while on the cross. There were a lot of other factors, like exposure, dehydration, and shock from blood loss. But the main thing is that if you're hanging by your arms and the weight of your body is unsupported, it's very hard to contract the muscles that normally expand your thoracic cavity and allow air to enter your lungs. So, you die slowly but terribly from lack of oxygen.

This reminds me of a time when I blacked out on the New York subway—I had just donated blood, which I do regularly without any adverse effects, but that time, I was dumb and ran up a steep flight of stairs to catch my train. That was completely unnecessary in hindsight, as another one would have come very soon, but the oxygen deficit started when I was inside the train, in a very crowded car. There were no seats, and as I was standing by a pole, my field of vision started to get dark around the edges, and slowly completely faded. I was staring at the person directly in front of me, but I couldn’t see a thing. I think that my hearing kind of started to go, too. It was weird because I could still feel myself holding onto the pole and standing upright, and my brain still had enough oxygen to think about my situation and realize, shit this is really scary. If I had been sitting down, I might not have blacked out, but obviously I, a painfully shy, apparently healthy, non-pregnant young woman, was not going to ask someone to get up for me even if I was blind from losing 10% of my oxygen-carrying capacity :)

Anyways, my vision came back for a brief moment, but the train was still going (it was a long stretch between stops), and then it went away again. Then it came back again, the train finally stopped, and I got off. Fortunately, it was a nice, cold, rainy day, and I was able to sit down, get some fresh air, and collect myself. Eventually I got up and got on a less crowded car where I could sit and got back home safely. Moral of the story: don’t run after donating blood.


	43. Book 4 Chapter 16: The Greatest Change

What's in a name?

Namedropping Chan and Zhao because they were definitely present on the naval aspect of the war in the Earth Kingdom. I always thought it was weird how Admiral Chan's son is also called Chan (frat boy Azula tried to flirt with on Ember Island), because in Eastern culture (at least in Chinese tradition), you never name a kid after their forebears. It's the height of dishonor, like, how can you presume to give your child such an illustrious name? What if they don’t live up to their ancestors' prestige? But then in the West, you not only get Bob Roberts, Sr. and Bob Roberts, Jr., but they liked the name so much that they decided to keep it up for multiple generations, and then eventually you get Bob Roberts the Eleventh, etc. I'll never understand it. Although I did kind of fall into that trap in this universe by making Commander Zhao's father to be Admiral Zhao, victorious at the North Pole. Oh, well.

Because I like to come up with random Chinese names, I made ones for Long Feng's disciples. If they were from very poor families, it's possible that they never learned to write their familial surname and their given name, or that they hadn't learned them yet. When he adopts them, they take his last name, so here are the names they would have had:

龍妞 lóng niū, with 妞 meaning 'girl'

龍淑 lóng shū, with 淑 meaning 'pure, virtuous'

But because Long Feng has a sense of humor in this universe, and the girls don’t know how to write their given names anyways, he gives them new names that are phonetically similar but mean something quite different.

龍牛 lóng niú, with 牛 meaning 'cow (or ox)'

龍鼠 lóng shǔ, with 鼠 meaning 'rat'.

The Chinese zodiac contains 12 animals, and the order is determined by a myth wherein there was a great race long ago, and the first 12 animals who crossed the finish line got to be in the zodiac. The order is: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, pig.

The rat came before the ox because the ox was nice enough to let the rat ride on its back during the race, but right before the finish line, the rat jumped off its back and crossed the finish line first. In the Chinese zodiac, people in the year of the Rat are characterized as very smart, cunning, more willing to undermine others to get what they want, and people of the year of the Ox are more hardworking, good-natured, possibly less intelligent. It's just a stereotype; my dad is an Ox and he does fit the bill, but he's also really smart and calculating.

The cat was also riding on the ox's back, but the rat pushed the cat off into a river and it never finished the race. So that's why cats hate rats and try to kill them.

I always wondered how the dragon, which is only the fastest and most magical creature in existence, came 5th, but one story says that it was because the dragon stopped to help some people whose village was on fire (remember in Chinese legend dragons are benevolent).

The point of sharing this zodiac story was to illustrate Long Shu and Long Niu's separate personalities and styles. Long Niu, like an ox, is kind and willing to help others at her own expense. She does what she thinks is right, for the greater good. In terms of torture methods, she's more of a brute force kind of person. On the other hand, Long Shu, like a rat, is clever and cunning about her method of attack, zoning on a person's weaknesses (much like pushing a cat into water), and she's not averse to throwing other people under the bus to achieve her ends, except for Long Niu. She genuinely loves her sister, but who knows about all the rest.

It's a bit rudimentary in terms of a character sheet, but I didn’t want to dwell on them too much and make a huge long origin story; that's just too involved for two characters that only show up for three chapters. 

Random bits from the author

Sweet potato rice porridge is my favorite staple at a local restaurant near home, although my parents and I stopped going. I think they're mad that the prices increased.

When I was in primary school, I loved making daisy chains out in the fields of the school playground, but then in middle school I moved to a preppy private school where they didn’t let us play in the grass during breaks. We had to be somewhere with adult supervision—lame, right? Theoretically I still know how to make daisy chains despite not having practice for years. Anyways, Lu Ten teaches Zuko how to make flower chains when they were little (before the events of this series) because why not? It's fun.

I've held 3 babies in my lifetime, I think, all my sister's kids. I thought it would be ironic if Lu Ten almost dropped Zuko when he was born and spent the rest of his life frantically trying to make up for it by being overprotective. Looking at my baby pictures, I did look very bread-like: long and rotund in approximately the shape and consistency of a loaf of bread. 

I seem to remember that in 2nd grade, we raised caterpillars and silkworms in our classrooms. Each desk had a little box of the bugs, full of leaves and food for them to eat. And then eventually they spun into their cocoons and looked pretty nauseating for a few weeks until they came out and we set them free.

Long Shu

References for Long Shu's elaborate hair

Front:

Back:

Long Shu shares a lot of similarities with the character pictured (Xia Dong, _Nirvana in Fire_ ): skilled secret agent, vaguely sociopathic, singularly loyal to her master but can be swayed emotionally when it comes to someone she loves.

Iroh

At this time, Lu Ten still doesn’t know that Iroh didn’t mean for him to go to battle against such a huge force. He still thinks his father is disappointed in him. He still doesn’t know that Kongming betrayed him, nor that Shinu orchestrated it all. They're going to have one hell of a relationship to mend when they meet again.

In the scene going back to Zuko and Azula's birth, Iroh has already been briefed on the Air Nomad sich, but I suppose Ozai was so pleased about it that he felt it bore repeating. Iroh's not quite as thrilled, being more of a moderate who wouldn’t see the need to completely obliterate the Air Nomads, if their main goal was to kill the Avatar.


	44. Book 4 Chapter 17: there is no war in Ba Sing Se

Progression of the plot over (a long, long) time

Mushi in Ba Sing Se was one of the first things I decided was going to happen, after I chose to have Lu Ten live. He was going to die for real, very early on, but I checked my chat logs with a friend, and on April 10th, 2016, I officially decided he was going to live but possibly get imprisoned and presumed dead in the Earth Kingdom somehow. And for a long time, that's all I knew about the plot.

After developing the concept of Long Feng's disciples, I was going to have Long Shu fall in love with Lu Ten, take out Long Feng and Long Niu, and let him go free. But as I started writing their characters, it became obvious that that wasn't going to work, and that within the "good cop bad cop" dichotomy, Long Niu was going to end up more sympathetic to Lu Ten. The poison double bluff also got developed some time around here. The Joo Dee reveal was probably the last idea I had for this arc. I knew Long Niu was going to be brainwashed, but into what?

I wanted to draw out Lu Ten's brainwashing more, but then I thought, no, I have already messed with my readers enough, let's get this over with. So now Long Shu takes over the Dai Li. How does she explain Long Feng's death to the other agents? Um… I'll let her do that on her own, off-screen. I don’t think the other Dai Li agents were particular fans of Long Feng. They'll probably follow whoever promises them the most security, like they defected to Azula in season 2.

Long Shu lets Lu Ten, now Mushi, go live in peace, and has agents keeping watch over him probably. But essentially, she has nothing to gain from him anymore, and he doesn’t remember his old self, so what's the point in killing him. And so it ends.

Long Feng

I really was thinking of this parallel between Long Feng and his disciples versus Ozai and his children. How it never really was a competition between Long Niu and Long Shu from the beginning, but just an excuse to remove Long Niu. He thinks that she's weak, that she's too selfless and unable to adroitly manipulate people into serving her purposes like Long Shu can. So obviously, he's biased against her from the beginning, just like Ozai banished Zuko without a second thought.

How does Long Feng know what's going on all the time? Well, it's all part of his aura of mystery and intrigue :) Maybe he has a secret passageway leading from his office to somewhere he can spy on Lu Ten's cell, unseen. Who knows. I realized this halfway through writing this arc, but technically he is the Grand Secretariat and can't spend all his time at the Dai Li headquarters under the lake. He should probably be attending to the Earth King, and there is some distance between the lake and the palace. Hm. He can just have proxies and agents in place to represent his interests while he's taking care of business at Lake Laogai; that's all I've got.

Medical

Superficial head lacerations tend to bleed a lot because there are many blood vessels close to the surface of the skin there, but they look worse than they are, generally. It's when you start bleeding under the skull that there's major cause to worry, because that leads to intracranial pressure, CNS effects, and death. Fortunately Lu Ten didn’t quite manage to get that far.

Mourning blossom was mentioned in chapter 11 when Lu Ten was showing it to Shang. I don’t know that it's based on a specific, real poison. I'm thinking it works most like tetanus toxin (from rusty nails/soil; you need a booster shot every 10 years), in that it contracts muscles without relaxing—then you can't contract them again. Once your respiratory muscles are permanently contracted, you can't breathe anymore, and you die. But it's highly unusual for a toxin to take effect within minutes unless it was inhaled or sublingual (or snorted). It's possible that such a poison does exist in real life; I just haven't researched it. So we'll just say that this particular poison is so potent and well-absorbed that two drops of it in the mouth can lead to instant death. Amazing.

Chinese

龍生九子：Chinese saying, literally, the dragon had nine sons. Figuratively: brothers of the same parents are all different from each other.

The qilin (麒麟) is a mythical, chimeric creature that represents justice and benevolence, said to appear during the reign of a righteous ruler, or to herald the start of a new reign or the birth of a great sage. I thought it would be ironic if Long Feng had one in his office just before he was slated to die and Long Shu took his place.

It's not always possible to tell whether a Chinese given name is male or female. Some people give their kids very obviously gendered names; girls' names have stuff like flowers, 'gentle,' 'kind,' 'beautiful,' and guys' names are like 'brave,' 'heroic,' 'patriotic.' But then you have names like my mom's, which has the characters for 'tree' and 'emigrant,' because she was born after my grandparents fled to Taiwan in the wake of the Communist Revolution. So that's kind of more ambiguous.

 


	45. Book 5 Chapter 1: The Southern Air Temple

Azula

As far as I can remember, Azula only kills one person in the show, and that was Aang. Everything else she does, taking out the Kyoshi warriors, taking over the Dai Li and Ba Sing Se, was completely bloodless. It was only after Mai betrayed her that she had any inkling of killing her. I wonder why they made that choice, though, perhaps to make her more sympathetic?

Anyways, Azula here is clearly a lot more pragmatic and less concerned with human life, even her own people. I think she has a lot less control over things than her canonical self, and as such resorts to extremes to protect herself. She kind of feels like Zuko at the beginning of season 2: on the run from the Fire Nation, but not accepted in EK either. Not a good place to be, but at least it's on her own terms, whereas Zuko got banished. But now all she has is her wits, her firebending, and one friend. And considering that she's already run into a dead end at the first air temple, it may not be enough.

Air Nomad genocide

Throwing eggs at a stone: 以卵投石 (yǐluǎntóushí), figurative meaning: to court defeat by fighting against overwhelming odds.

To reiterate: Sozin's Comet didn’t destroy the Air Nomads in this universe. Instead, the comet came in the year Sozin was born (over a hundred years ago), and will return this year. So it's not a hundred-year comet, but we can't expect celestial bodies to adhere so neatly to human measures of time.

Presently, Azula doesn’t know the name of the airbender with Zuko, nor that he's the son of Tenzin. I think that might become important later on.

[My theory](http://the-cloud-whisperer.tumblr.com/post/174276768297/i-just-had-a-theory) that Air Nomads assimilated into EK, and their descendants got their airbending reactivated by Harmonic Convergence

Random things

Ancient Chinese compasses pointed south. Don’t know why this is; I barely passed Electricity&Magnetism in physics class :)

I would describe Appa's sounds as mooing. Bison are related to cows, after all. Also, my friend got me a keychain from Fanime with Appa mooing :)

Qin Lee: random guy who worked in communications on Fire Lord Ozai's airship during the day of the Comet. His engineer friend didn’t have a name, so I couldn’t use him.


	46. Book 5 Chapter 2: The Northern Air Temple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry in advance for the link spam; I don't want to be redundant, so might as well redirect you to what I've already written on the topics instead of rehashing it all here.

Canon versus fanfiction

First of all, it is embarrassing how many times I typed 'Mechanic' instead of 'Mechanist'. If you find a typo that I didn’t catch, please tell me. It was so fun to write his weird little mannerisms; he's such an amusing guy. Timing-wise, it's very different from canon. Here, the Mechanist has already perfected the hot air balloon, but the Fire Nation also has this technology already, independently invented. The royal family uses it to get around, and also for war (eventually developing actual airships like in the show's finale).

It's only been 16 years since the Air Nomad genocide, not 100, so I would think some of the stuff in the temple still works, and even if it doesn't, the Mechanist can figure it out. And maybe the Guru would have kept some things in working order. Who knows, though, since his only worldly attachment seems to be onion-banana juice, he might not be that invested in the facilities' upkeep. These are the things that keep me up at night.

Originally, I didn’t want to bring in Teo and the Mechanist's village who moved to the NAT because… too many characters, my brain hurts. But then I thought, how are Zuko and Aang going to eat while they're living in the air temple?? It would be super inconvenient if they had to come down from the mountain and go to some town every time they ran out of food. So the solution was for them to bring the village to the temple and get fed in the process.

I also really wanted Aang to be the one to welcome them into the air temple, because in the show, he was really not pleased about them being there, what with all the destruction of Air Nomad legacies. And I could understand that for Aang, the loss of his people was still very recent and raw in his mind, and of course it would look like these villagers were just disrespecting his culture. Here, Aang is a little farther removed from Air Nomad tradition, and while he certainly wants to maintain their culture and legacies, he can also better empathize with people whose lives have been displaced and need security in their homes above all else. 

Tie-in to Battle of Maple River

Serendipitously, the location of Gusu, the Mechanist's hometown, is around the same area in the northwestern Earth Kingdom where Lu Ten used to be stationed in the early days of the war. It's a small world. Between Jet, Hanxin, and Lee, it seems like Zuko can't go anywhere without running into people whose lives Lu Ten touched.

A map of this chapter’s events—please excuse my atrocious lines; my tablet is meant for taking notes, not drawing.

For references to the battle mentioned by Lee, see Lu Ten's letter to Zuko in [_save some face_ chapter 4](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7009621/chapters/16237217) (and [notes on the historical battle ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7019827/chapters/16237436)that inspired it), and [_brave enough to die_ chapter 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213332/chapters/21607520) for the detailed events.

History

Cold Mountain Temple (Chinese 寒山寺，hánshānsì) is a real place in Gusu, an old district of the city of Suzhou, just west of Shanghai. The origin of its name isn't because it's located on a cold mountain, but rather that the monk who first lived there was named Han Shan, or Cold Mountain.

Maple Bridge (PC my mother) crosses the Grand Canal in Gusu (manmade, not an actual river like it is in this universe).

The song Lee sings is the poem "Mooring by Maple Bridge at Night", by Zhang Ji. Translation in the text is mine, but [this site](http://bystander.homestead.com/intro_tang.html) has a good version with some helpful explication.  

Random tie-ins

Abacus: Chinese calculator consisting of rows of beads. Top row corresponds to value of 5, bottom rows correspond to value of 1. Each column is a place unit (e.g., ones, tens, hundreds). I owe my acuity with mental math to years of abacus practice in childhood (which back then was a torture but now, I'm grateful that I can multiple up to four digits in my head).

Roseroot: _Rhodiola rosea,_ plant used in traditional Chinese medicine to prevent altitude sickness and for general health. Recent clinical trials demonstrate potential application as an alternative therapy for depression, but it's unlikely to ever be FDA-approved given Western attitudes towards TCM.

Huqiu, Wuxi, Kunshan, Luoyang: all real cities somewhat close to the historical Gusu. The real life geography of this region is not remotely similar to the mountains of the northern Earth Kingdom; I just pulled up Google Maps. Oh well, can't have all the parallels :)

Unresolved questions and concerns

I'm still mulling over how much detail I should go into about what TSK (Toph/Sokka/Katara) are up to and how much they should interact with the White Lotus. Sigh…why did I get myself into such a plotty series.

Random thought: everyone in this series has either had their village destroyed by fire or swept away in a flood. I really need to introduce some hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, or landslides; the other elements are just as devastating.

Where's the Guru? I sure as hell don’t know, but later I'll probably come up with an important reason for him to be conveniently absent. Mainly, I didn't want him to be there while the whole village was crashing in the temple and adding to the chaos.

Why are there so many letters as plot devices in this universe? Mainly because I like writing letters. In this day and age where all communication is conducted via email and messaging, it's so nice to get an actual letter (that isn't bills or ads). My friend and I who live on opposite sides of the country regularly exchange letters, although it takes a week each way. Soon she'll be moving to the same coast as me, and then it'll be faster :)

Zuko's nice footbath/massage was inspired by my own pains from walking up and down a steep hill to get to school in bad shoes. I know, I'm so lame, but weirdly, my feet don’t hurt as much as my calves do; they get very tight, probably lactic acid buildup.


	47. Book 5 Chapter 3: Monachopsis

Noodles

Why is this whole chapter about noodles? You guessed it: because I love noodles. Well, I love most noodles, except _héf_ _ě_ _n_ (flat rice noodles) and _chángf_ _ě_ _n_ (glutinous rice noodles that often have meat fillings inside). And probably some other types of weird noodles, mostly eaten in the south. Beef shank (brisket) noodles are my favorite.

I got the idea for Mushi's noodle-making background from [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1MLIw6mP2k). It's showing how to make Lanzhou-style beef noodles. The lady in this video is based in Sichuan (I think?), and she has loads of videos showing her on her farm and making all these mouthwatering foods from scratch. It's amazing; it makes me think, I should abandon this city mouse life and go live a rustic lifestyle in the mountains. Except then I remember, there's probably no air conditioning. So I could never do it.

Lu Ten has forgotten everything of his past life, but his brain fabricated memories of an Earth Kingdom citizen based on what he knows of their lives. I suppose maybe he stopped in a village one time and learned how to make noodles. Or maybe he learned it back when he was roaming the Fire Nation with Zuko.

Plum blossoms：

[踏雪尋梅](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FZzOtXn_kc) | Searching for Plum Blossoms in Snow

雪霽天晴朗 | _After snowfall, the sky's bright and pleasant_

臘梅處處香 | _Plum blossoms everywhere smell so fragrant_

騎驢把橋過 | _On donkey-back I cross the river for an errand_

鈴兒響叮噹 | _The bells chime ring-ding-dong_

響叮噹，響叮噹，響叮噹，響叮噹 | _Ring-dong-dong, etc._

好花採得瓶供養 | _My only companion is a vase of plucked blooms_

伴我書聲琴韻 | _To watch over my studies and song_

共度好時光 | _And pass a lovely afternoon ere it's gone._

This is another song I used to sing with my mom while taking walks. I think my class also performed this song for New Year celebration one year at Chinese school, a weekend ordeal all kids of Chinese descent in my hometown were subjected to growing up. Except for me, because I actually enjoyed it, and I think I volunteered to translate the song for my less-engaged classmates. They were all really pissed at me and thought I was like a teacher's pet because I got good marks and could actually hold a conversation in Chinese. But then, same classmates were the ones who grew up to regret not touching base more with their cultural roots in childhood, so… you reap what you sow.

Random other Chinese stuff

Qingming Festival is usually around April 4th and is a day of ancestor worship (see [_brave enough to die_ chapter 10](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213332/chapters/27316653) for more info). It's also the date I picked for Lu Ten's birthday. It marks early spring in China, and tea leaves picked before this date are the most tender and fragrant and therefore more prized and expensive than those collected afterwards.

Huaiyin, from where Mushi believes himself to hail, is an old name for Huai'an, Jiangsu, and is the historic birthplace of the real Han Xin (231-196 BC). It's just west of Yancheng (which means 'salt city') on the coast.

The Dai Li agents were named Kuan (寬）and Zhai （窄), which mean 'broad' and 'narrow' respectively, usually describing a street.

Jet

Refer back to [_brave enough to die_ chapter 3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8213332/chapters/19600606) for Jet and Lu Ten's meeting. In the intervening years, Jet probably did some research regarding Lu Ten, and found out more about him as well as when he died. Then he met Lee / Zuko, who was revealed to be the son of Ozai, and finally put things together, realizing who Zuko's cousin actually was. Poor Jet, he can't take two steps without a firebender coming along and turning his life upside down.  

How does Lu Ten light the fountain if he lost his firebending?

By now, the drug the Dai Li poisoned him with to suppress his bending has worn off, so the only thing keeping him from firebending is his memory. Obviously if he doesn’t remember how to firebend, he can't. But I think there are two aspects to the knowledge of bending: conscious and subconscious. Subconscious knowledge is like instinctual, when little children spontaneously start bending without having learned yet. Conscious knowledge comes after you start training and learn the procedural theory of bending. Mushi can't access this conscious knowledge, so he can't bend at will, but he can do it subconsciously if provoked.


End file.
